How to Unlock Mei: Changes, Skins, and Rework

Mei is a Damage hero in Overwatch 2. Read on to learn more about Mei, their weapons and abilities, their patch notes history, their backstory, and more!

Mei Latest Buffs and Nerfs

April 26, 2022 Patch Notes

Mei Day One Patch Notes
Endothermic Blaster	• Freeze no longer fully freezes enemies and instead, slows them by 50% at a constant rate. • Slow decreased from 1 second to 0.5 seconds. • DPS has been increased from 55 to 100. • Ammo increased from 120 to 150.
Cryo-Freeze	• No longer affects Zarya's and Sigma's ultimates.
Ice Wall	• Pillar health reduced from 400 to 250. • Range reduced from 35 meters to 20 meters.
Blizzard	• Increased cost by 15%.

Mei Hero Profile

Basic Information

Mei (Mei-Ling Zhou)
	Role	Damage
	Ranking
	Total HP	・ 250 ・ 250 (Base Health)
	Voice Actor	Elise Zhang
	Nationality	Chinese
Affiliations	Overwatch, Atlas News

How to Unlock

Character Redesign

Overwatch 1	Overwatch 2

Mei's reworked design gives emphasis to the passage of time as seen with her hair being noticeable longer. While her color scheme gets no update, we can see the shift to a more technological and battle-ready version of the original suit.

Mei Weapons and Abilities

Mei Main Weapon

Endothermic Blaster	Primary Fire
	Damage: 100 per second
	Description: Short-range spray weapon that slows enemies.
	Secondary Fire
	Damage: 75
	Description: Long-range icicle launcher.

Mei Abilities

Cryo-Freeze	Type: Ability Cooldown: 12 secs Duration: 4 secs
Effect: Become invulnerable and heal yourself.
Ice Wall	Type: Ability Cooldown: 12 secs Duration: 5 secs
Effect: Create a wall in front of you.
Blizzard	Type: Ultimate Damage: 3.84
Effect: Launch a weather control drone that freezes enemies in a wide area.
Role: Damage	Type: Passive
Effect: Eliminations grant a burst of increased movement speed and reload speed.

How to Play and Tips

Primary Fire Slows Down Heroes

Endothermic Blaster's primary fire slows down any enemy hero it makes contact with, making them easier targets for you and your team. Prioritize slowing down key targets such as Supports and mobile Damage Heroes.

Secondary Fire Has No Damage Falloff

Endothermic Blaster's secondary fire remains accurate and does not decrease in damage over long distances, making it effective at harassing and taking down foes from far away. Prioritize aiming for headshots to deal large amounts of critical damage.

Use Secondary Fire Along Choke Points

You can easily take out careless foes with Mei by using Endothermic Blaster's secondary fire to cover choke points and other key locations. Take your enemies by surprise by preemptively firing icicles at head level toward narrow paths and spawn points.

Use Ice Wall to Reach High Places

Mei can place an Ice Wall beneath her feet to boost herself upward. Doing this lets Mei access shortcuts and high areas she normally can't reach and allows her to fire at and flank foes from unexpected angles.

Mei Can Rotate Ice Wall

By pressing Ice Wall's ability button a second time, Mei can rotate her Ice Wall placement by 90 degrees. Take advantage of this feature to have an easier time covering irregular angles with Ice Wall.

Dodge Abilities and Ultimates with Cryo-Freeze

While Cryo-Freeze works well for saving Mei and allowing her to recover her health in dire situations, she can also use it to save herself from dangerous abilities and ultimates. A list of significant abilities which Mei can dodge can be seen below:

• Ultimates: D.Va's Self Destruct, Junkrat's Rip-Tire, Cassidy's Deadeye
• Regular Abilities: Ana's Sleep Dart, Roadhog's Chain Hook

Use Blizzard to Land Headshots

Blizzard completely freezes enemies in place if they stay too long within its radius. Take this opportunity to land high-damage headshots with Endothermic Blaster's secondary fire.

Communicate and Coordinate With Your Team

Make frequent use of voice communication or the game's Ping System to make the most of Mei's ultimate. Use the Countdown ping to signal your teammates when you're about to use Blizzard, allowing them to combo their ultimates with yours.

A list of significant ultimates that work well with Mei's Blizzard can be seen below:

• Sigma's Gravitic Flux
• Orisa's Terra Surge
• Zarya's Graviton Surge
• Reaper's Death Blossom

How to Counter

Attack from Long Range

Mei is great at slowing down high-mobility heroes like Lucio and Tracer so killing her from long-range from hitscan heroes like Ashe, Widowmaker, Soldier:76, and Sojourn is a great tactic.

When it comes to Mei's ult there are a few ways to counter it. One way is to absorb her projectile using D.Va's Defense Matrix or Sigma's Grasp. Hitting Mei using Orisa's Javelin or Ana's sleep dart can also disrupt her mid-ult. Lucio can also reposition her using his alternate fire to ruin the trajectory of Mei's ultimate,

Mei Hero Counters

Mei Skins

Base Game Skins

Hero Skins
Abominable (Legendary)	Ecopoint: Antartica (Legendary)	Firefighter (Legendary)
Rescue Mei (Legendary)	Yeti Hunter (Legendary)	Earthen (Epic)
Snow Plum (Epic)	Chrysanthemum (Rare)	Heliotrope (Rare)
Jade (Rare)	Persimmon (Rare)	Classic (Common)

League Skins

Hero Skins
MM-Mei (Legendary)	Atlanta Reign (Epic)	Boston Uprising (Epic)
Chengdu Hunters (Epic)	Dallas Fuel (Epic)	Florida Mayhem (Epic)
Guangzhou Charge (Epic)	Hangzhou Spark (Epic)	Houston Outlaws (Epic)
London Spitfire (Epic)	Los Angeles Gladiators (Epic)	Los Angeles Valiant (Epic)
New York Excelsior (Epic)	Paris Eternal (Epic)	Philadelphia Fusion (Epic)
San Francisco Shock (Epic)	Seoul Dynasty (Epic)	Shanghai Dragons (Epic)
Toronto Defiant (Epic)	Vancouver Titans (Epic)	Washington Justice (Epic)

Event Skins

Hero Skins
Beekeeper (Legendary)	Chang'e (Legendary)	Honeydew (Legendary)
Jiangshi (Legendary)	Luna (Legendary)	Mei-rry (Legendary)
Pajamei (Legendary)	Penguin (Legendary)	Sprinkles (Legendary)
Overwatch Contenders (Epic)	Pumpkin (Epic)

Mei Cosmetics

Victory Poses

Fist Bump (Rare) Season 1 Battle Pass	Heroic (Common) Base Game	Casual (Rare) Base Game
Hands on Hips (Rare) Base Game	Kneeling (Rare) Base Game	Medal (Rare) Summer Games Event
R.I.P. (Rare) Halloween Terror Event	Toast (Rare) Winter Wonderland Event	Lucky! (Rare) Lunar New Year Event
Peace (Rare) Anniversary Event

Voice Lines

Emotes

Mei Story

Mission: Save the Ecosystem

Mei is one of the many scientists that are fighting for the environment. As a part of one of Overwatch's initiatives, she, along with her team, was sent to Antarctica to monitor the climate there. With the harsh weather, a storm had cut them off and damaged their facility, leaving them no choice but to enter stasis until they could be saved.

Tragedy at the Research Lab

Unfortunately, due to a malfunction with the stasis chambers, only Mei survived. She awoke to a world where Overwatch was no more and the very phenomenon they were studying had gotten worse.
Thankfully, she was able to access a final emergency broadcast from Winston, which guided her to a renewed focus and purpose.

Invention Genius

Taking matters into her own hands, she has created her own climate-manipulation technology to try and re-establish the eco-network. With it, she is able to freeze enemies, object and even herself in order to gain the advantage in any situation.
Mei also created her own robotic companion named Snowball. Snowball is a small but resourceful, disc shaped, flying robot. Together, they take on the harsh unknown to save the ecosysystem.

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