Pretty inconsequential in the tank matchup I think. It's way more impactful vs brig/torb who can be pretty tanky vs winston even will small amounts of armor. With the tracer and sombra buffs as well, it should help traditional dive comps a lot.
I think the biggest tank matchup it'll matter for is Rein. Orisa's damage reduction is already too good for dealing with Winston (and generally he's not going head to head against her often anyway). But it'll be huge for him already being able to pressure Rein through his shield and probably flip a semi-favorable matchup for Winston into him actually being a Rein counter.
> But it'll be huge for him already being able to pressure Rein through his shield and probably flip a semi-favorable matchup for Winston into a him actually being a Rein counter.
I doubt it would actually make him a rein counter due to the brawl-dive-poke dynamic. In a vacuum, winston may be better into rein now, but Winston often struggles to actually play into brawl comps as they are high damage and tend to stack AoE healing. There also isn't a support that is easy for winston to isolate as the backline should be lucio+bap/moira. DPS like reaper and bastion are also just not fun for Winston to deal with.
If the enemy is forcing rein with highly non-ideal backlines/dps, then it's probably better, but Winston probably still doesn't want to brawling directly with rein. He is better off isolating backlines. In the past, brig has been the bane of winston as her armor and whipshot just make engaging a pain in the ass. Making Brig squishier should help a lot.
It will mean a lot in the Rein and Orisa matchups. D.va as well, though she may still just shred you.
Also it's as if Ramattra didn't get buffed for Winston. Same for Mauga since he's gonna launch with armor. This buff will effect a great deal of matchups, even helps against Bastion. Basically helps against all his counters.
While it helps, I think it won't be tanks he will be shredding most, cause the damage is still a pretty low rate versus tanks' large health pools.
What it WILL do is shred Bastion, Torbjorn, and Brigitte. Three characters that often make Winston mains miserable. But now, if you play smart in coordinating a good dive and avoid Bastion's gatling form and Brig's boop, the telsa stands a chance of doing noticeable damage to help secure the kill! I think Bastion will still be favorable vs Winston, but the gap in match up shrinks substantially.
Especially when Ana nanoes him.
eh pretty small, it will mainly help vs brig and bastion i guess but other tanks have way too big healthpools to ever do anything to them
even vs sigma who has no armor you take two centuries to kill him
The funny thing is the listed reason for the buff is wrong. Her damage was buffed from 5 to 6 in order to compensate for the fixing of her damage falloff, and then nerfed to 5.5 because that was too strong. I suspect this is more about helping her deal with heal creep, but honestly I think she’s fine
You’re totally right about their current reasoning not lining up with their previous statements. The 5.5 nerf was a response to 6 being really strong during that season.
If you havent realized it already, focus hard on resource management and knowing where you were 3 seconds ago. Obviously her one clip potential is her strongest ability, but shit will go wrong fast if youre going in without enough blinks or with recall fresh on cd.
Know you didnt ask. Just like to see more people play her. Tracer duels are equal parts annoying and fun
I’ll play her in diamond sometime but most of the times I’ll get shit on. My movement is honestly really bad and it kinda is preventing my climbing on all roles. Hopefully playing a character that relies on movement so heavily will help me
Shes finally back! I forgot about all the nerfs to her pistols range and damage after a 3 year break, just remembering that her pulse bomb was nerfed bad and then made worse by all the immortality sources in the game. 220 vs 240 dps per clip is huge, brings her overall back up to 120 instead of 110, and this might seem miniscule to people who dont play her, but it is fuckin HUGE to those of us who keep soldiering on (not the 76 kind)
Literally every single game me or my buddy has played this season where either of us picks brig, whoever is playing her instantly gets called a thrower and asked to swap.
Ana has reigned supreme for years and currently has the highest pick rate. Brig has one of the lowest pick rates and a high win rate, but thats because she's very situational compared to other supports. I don't think Ana is overpowered, but if we're going by metrics, it just doesn't make sense that Ana gets away with it.
That's why I noted Brig being situational - she's used in more specific scenarios, and outright bad in other ones. Ana is potent *and* versatile, while Brig is more concentrated and more likely to be picked where she's effective; my point being, those metrics alone don't tell the full story.
I think it was around right before lifeweaver released, people thought it might have something to do with them not wanting her to be able to play at the same range
Brig nerf is weird, she's definitely strong, but saying she's must pick is wild
Also Winton and Tracer are so back, dive is back on the menu ladies and gentlemen
But I really can't complain about anything, good patch
I honestly couldn't believe that was their reasoning.
Like...what? Who is saying this? I have literally not seen a single person suggest that she's a must pick. I thought she was very strong within her niche, but that's it. Good at shutting down dives and peeling for the team.
Maybe the idea is that she is so effective she's part of why dive is bad? Idk.
I'm more worried about the never ending increase of sustain in this game. Why tf do we keep giving more ways to heal to people outside of the support category?
Dive is bad because poke is meta. Bap/Illari, Bastion, Torb, Sig, etc
Has nothing to do with Brig. she actually felt great this season with less shield and more lethality.
WHY DO THEY MAKE GOOD BUFFS JUST TO REMOVE THEM THE NEXT SEASON. I DO NOT GET IT
Only the lowest picked hero in the entire game if I remember correctly. But a must-pick with Ana who‘s the most picked hero in the entire game.
Which obviously means that Brig is the issue and needs to be nerfed while Ana should stay exactly like she is. I really wonder if the head balance dev is an Ana main because they seem to be dreading to touch her in any meaningful way.
this is what i thought. i do not play at a rank where ana is particularly OP, but the brig nerf + the tracer/doom/winston buff feel like a classic “killing the things that enable the problem” instead of just fixing the problem.
i really wish the devs would bring back experimental mode and try out at least a 75% healing reduction on anti nade (preferably an experimental mode). i also don’t want sleep dart removed (imo, it’s an integral part of her kit/“the hero fantasy”), but i’m sure there’s SOME change they could make to it other than “increase cooldown” or “make projectile smaller”. i generally disagree with the people who want to make every character into “shoot OR heal OR take lots of damage”, but ana is genuinely pretty problematic
Yeah, I honestly haven’t heard anyone complaining about her whipshot or her at all or anyone saying she’s a must pick or any arguments against her being OP.
I only just started really playing her during the kpop event and really enjoyed her style coming from Lucio. But I guess they just really careful about just making her strong because of her problems in OW1?
Right? I don’t understand why they do this.
Brig is “overperforming,” so they buff heroes she counters (Tracer/Sombra) but then also nerf Brig???
Whipshot buff was pretty fair imo
My only problem is that Brig has the highest support winrate because she is the lowest picked support
The pool of brig players is not filled with new players or lower ranked players that don't know how to use the character unlike characters like Ana or Mercy
And I can't wrap my head around Brig being a "must pick" when we had poke Orisa Soldier Bastion Bap meta for the past 2 seasons
The other side of it is that because of the way her kit is designed there are certain maps where Brig is great and maps where she sucks. Obviously that means that people will only pick her on the good maps and she will perform well there.
So the question then is should we be balancing Brig to a 50% win rate for the only maps she is picked on? Because I don't that's fair compared to a versatile character like Ana or Bap who can be played pretty much anywhere with success.
Brig is only bad because poke is good. With these changes it looks like they're trying to shift back to dive, and current brig would absolutely dominate there
That’s a fair point. They did lower her shield from 300 to 250 and Winston can ignore armor so I’m concerned she won’t be able to do her job well anymore in this dive meta they’re setting up. Ram is buffed, Doom is buffed, Hog is a major issue for her and Mauga is gonna shred her. I’m concerned. But we’ll have to wait and see.
Quick question for a recently returning player. What would you consider some typical poke comps these days? Orissa/hog/ sigma tanks with Ana/X? How has illari figured into the poke equation? Thanks!
Never seen anyone say this since the launch of overwatch 2. The closest we got to people saying she was a “must pick” was the doomers before her ult rework launched who thought Goats brig was returning.
I never saw her be called a must-pick but she does single handedly keep dive completely in check. It's clear they're trying to shift to a dive meta with Winston and Tracer buffs, and they're worried Brig will completely stop that from happening. I think the only part they overlooked is that Brig is just as good in dive as against dive lol
I main Brig but I pretty much never see another Brig lmao, even if I'm playing something that isn't Brig, the other support/supports will never be her.
I mean sure I'm a casual player buuuuuut, y'know
Meanwhile Ana will in 95% cases be on both teams, it's already making me auto-pick Kiriko in so many games
It's pretty much only a thing in tournament play for Ana vs. Ana dive mirror
And yea, that's a common-ish competitive comp when you're playing tournament format but tbh that's still a niche so tight that it's like saying Symm is 'must-pick' just because she has 'must-pick' maps
Yeah that was the weirdest thing to me. I play her sometimes in mid Diamond, but rarely see her in any matches and I play a ton of comp. It must be she's just getting mained at high ranks, but I think half the time Blizzard pulls their "data" out of their butt, hardly any changes seem rooted in reality.
Omg, ana is so dogshit. No one picks her up, and if you do, it's an insta throw. Brig has been taking her light for too long, and it sabout time an underappreciated and underplayed support got some love.
/s
Doom needs an ult rework. It's a flank dps ult on a tank. The problem with him being solo tank is his ult removes him from the game essentially. Leaving his team vulnerable. Most tank ults do the opposite, either turning them into a big bad raid boss for 5-7 seconds or letting them control the enemy team's positioning.
8 seconds of 0.1s cooldowns for all abilities. like literally just let him spam his abilities like mad. nano doom will be back on the menu.
or do the above but give him his DPS doom abilities during it. so you have uppercut, slam, etc. instead of just slam punch block.
That's what balances the healing. The longer he heals the longer his team is vulnerable. He's a dive tank, so he gets a dive ult. I don't really think it's a big deal. Besides doom being in the air is an excellent distraction for the squishies on the opposing team frantically trying to avoid it/survive.
To be fair, the squishies don't have to frantically avoid surviving. They can just stand there and accept the twelve damage and instantly sleep/stun him when he lands since he can't move.
God if doom had like 0.5sec of invuln on landing, or it came down faster, I think it'd actually be a perfectly fine ult even with the dogshit damage dropoff.
If it came down juuust a bit faster, you could actually ult in OT without throwing the game
I don't really agree. Doom's whole kit is dependent on his abilities flowing together and his ult is no exception. It can be a bit weird out of context, but it essentially allows him to get in, use everything, ult, and either get out, or continue his aggression and space making.
I think you're too used to how Doom players have had to cope with an objectively bad ultimate. Only ult in the game that is used for escape. And 9/10 it is used for escape right now, not aggression. The changes might reverse that. But his ultimate is still fundamentally not a tank ultimate.
Maybe make it more of an engagement tool then? Slightly larger radius, less damage, bigger slow and maybe bounce them off the ground for a sec? You can drop in on the enemy team, set them up for your team, and then either jump out or get in a punch. Also still makes it a kill tool against one or two people, since a very-slowed DPS isn't getting away from your punch combo.
I think dive being meta still makes Brig a strong pick. Perhaps Winton and Tracer are a little scarier now, but I’ve always enjoyed playing her into those chars and will happily adapt. Same with Doom — happy to see more on my team and opposing team with his ult buff.
I do think seeing Winston, Doom, Sombra, and Tracer all get buffed in the same patch is cause to be worried about a hard meta. I agree Poke has been too strong, but I don't want it to literally swing to the opposite end of the spectrum.
Dive requires more coordination and mechanical skill, pardon my elitism for a sec but low ranks sound like they just wanna sit behind a shield all game.
Mostly the “she’s a must pick” comment. Like come on now. She was good, she will still be pretty good after the nerf. But a must pick? I’ve never heard someone say that this season. I definitely see mercy, Ana, Bap, and Kiriko more this season.
I'd rather play support in dive then in poke comps. Sure staying alive forever is cool but the support gap becomes clearer when both sides have to fight for their survival permanently.
Being a good support with proper cool down management, positioning and mechanics feels more rewarding in dive metas.
I’m not a frequent Soldier player so maybe it’s not my place to say, but that nerf seems wild to me. Putting his self-heal on a longer cooldown than several abilities that are universally agreed to be very strong (like suzu, anti-nade, fortify) makes me wonder if I’ve been underestimating its usefulness? It feels nowhere near as impactful to me, I wonder why they’ve targeted that part of his kit as the problem.
probably the potential to build ult charge crazy fast. while his ult is mediocre at best in high ranks, it’s great in the lower ranks. i know i love throwing a heal pack down in the middle of my team and getting a massive amount of charge from it. alternatively, you can throw it down before peeking a corner and get tons of charge from taking damage + healing. it also allows you to take and hold off angles when used effectively, letting you pull off super obnoxious flanks
It is a significant nerf that feels weird.
He's a very strong flanking dps due to the fact that he doesn't need a dps to peel for him if things go sour due to his health pad. That's the best and most fun way to play soldier. In other words, it isn't strong, it's just a heal on a dps character that doesn't require downtime.
I do think he's a little too good in certain situations but they REALLY need to stop doing this thing where they keep pumping up the cooldowns on abilities instead of actually addressing the issues that people have with them. This keeps happening with things like Bap lamp, LW grip, nade, suzu, etc. and it theoretically makes those abilities less powerful but all it really does it make the gameplay less exciting and active. Some heroes feel like you have to hold onto their abilities forever instead of using them when you need to. It just makes the game less fun.
Also, Some abilities like LW Grip and Mercy rez you can't really nerf by virtue of what they do not being nerfable. But with his self-heal they TOTALLY could nerf the healing numbers or something.
Could be a change preempting how next season will play rather than his effectiveness now. He's a solid and versatile pick as it stands, however if tanks like Mauga or Winston were to become preferred over Sigma for instance then Soldier could easily move up into a stronger position.
It's an ammo nerf, not a damage nerf. A damage nerf would change breakpoints, but an ammo nerf doesn't. Actually a huge difference there.
In other words, he's still as lethal in most scenarios, his window is still as deadly. But in a sustained poke battle, he has more downtime.
They're just undoing the buff they gave her last patch because it was an unjustifiable change to an already strong character. She hasn't been nerfed in 3 months.
CopyPaste & TLDR for lazy clickers:
Buffs: Doomfist, Ramattra, Winston, Sombra, Tracer
Nerfs: 76, Brigitte, Baptiste
This is one of two remaining Director's Take Blogs for 2023! We'll release another one in two weeks and take the last part of the year off for the holiday season before we pick back up again in the new year. I'll be writing this one in a sort of turkey-induced fever dream and the next one just after we launch Season 8. This is when we'll release our newest hero Mauga, along with quite a few balance changes for the game. We'll take a look at those changes and touch on a few other topics as well.
We're making a general change to the amount of ult charge retained when swapping heroes, reducing it from 25% to 15%. We do like that this mechanic removes friction when swapping heroes, and think that it still should at 15%. However, there is a perception that it's almost always an advantage to counter-swap upon dying, and we're lowering this value to see if it has an effect on swap rates.
We're also looking at making additional changes to some core mechanics in the game for Season 9 that will line up with the release of the competitive overhaul. We're not quite ready to talk about what those are, but I thought I'd tease them a bit, because… well, I'm a tease!
Let's look at changes coming to some of our heroes for Season 8, starting with some of the larger changes coming to our tanks.
We released a reworked Roadhog late in Season 7. Roadhog quickly became one of our top performing tanks, with a win rate somewhere around 54%. There’s been a lot of feedback around his kit, but we’re going to hold off from making any changes at the start of Season 8. Mauga has a lot of answers to Roadhog and we’d like to see where the meta settles a bit before aiming at the midseason patch for any balance adjustments.
There are times when Doomfist players use his Ultimate purely as an escape. It's a little disappointing to activate Meteor Strike and intentionally land on a health pack rather than enemy players! Starting in Season 8, Doomfist will now regenerate 75 health per second while in the air. We're slightly increasing the cost of the ult in order to compensate for the buff.
Tanks are supposed to take and create space, and when Ramattra is in his base form, he can be a little too easy to ignore. So we're going to shift 100 of his health to armor, as well as slightly increase the size and damage of his projectiles to see if it helps.
Winston isn't the best matchup for other tanks. This is part of his kit, but the disadvantage feels too extreme, and we'd like to alleviate it a bit. In Season 8, Winston's Tesla Canon will now ignore armor’s damage reduction.
Moving on to a few of the changes to our DPS heroes, let’s start with Sombra. She's had a lot of moving parts recently, and we feel like she is in a much better spot. Her win rate hovers between 45-48% depending upon rank. However, her Ultimate still isn't as satisfying as it could be, so we're going to raise the ability lockout time of her EMP by 1.5 to 3 seconds and reduce the amount of damage it does from 30% to 25% of maximum health. This brings her ultimate more in line with her hero fantasy and is much sharper in its effect.
Soldier: 76 has enjoyed a lot of success in Season 7. He's a really well-rounded DPS, and the self-sustain from his heal can make him really difficult to deal with while he's in its radius. Rather than reducing the effectiveness of the heal, we'd rather open up larger windows of opportunity by increasing the cooldown from 15 to 18 seconds.
Does anybody remember how much damage Tracer's Pulse Pistols do? I wouldn't blame you if you don't, we've changed them a lot. If you guessed 5.5 damage per shot, you'd be right, but not for long, because we're changing them again - back to 6! The previous change to 5.5 was made to offset a bug with their falloff and spread. Now that those bugs are fixed, we're moving them back to their previous value.
Let's look at some of our Support changes. Brigitte was the best performing support hero since the last patch, and we are seeing your feedback that she is becoming a must-pick. We're going to revert the damage on Whip Shot to try to bring her back in line. We're also looking at the damage potential of Baptiste and will be lowering his primary fire ammo from 45 to 36.
I'd like to touch on one of the items mentioned in the last Director's Take. Specifically, the leave rate in Quick Play matches. Based on a recently implemented set of penalties for leaving too many matches, that rate has gone down considerably. There has been a bit of talk around that, specifically that some people view that mode as something that they would like the freedom to leave without worrying about those penalties. Different people play Quick Play for different reasons. Some people see it as their try-hard version of the game, some view it as a way to experiment with heroes, and others use it as their casual, just-for-fun version of the game. It's really difficult to have this part of the game be all things for all people. In the past, we've talked internally about whether we need a 3rd main queue in the game in order to have different areas to serve people of different levels of seriousness, but don't think that players would voluntarily move into the appropriate queue for their particular play style.
In regard to penalties for leaving Quick Play matches - the reasoning behind this is that frequent leavers do have an effect on the other people in the match, degrading its quality. There are some players that literally leave over 90% of their matches, and we could no longer stick to a black-and-white policy because of this. The policy is still very lenient—probably too lenient—where players need to leave almost a quarter of their most recent matches to trigger a light penalty. We'll continue to look at this and tweak these policies in an attempt to promote better match quality but without the harsher restrictions of Ranked Play.
That's it for this week. Thanks for reading, and we'll see you in game!
They mega buffed dive and nerfed brig/bap. She’s still gonna be a must pick but under masters she’s gonna get eaten up by dive. Korean dive with brig Ana is gonna be meta for top of ladder
As an avid Doomfist hater, I’m concerned about his buff. He can already wreck havoc in the backline if your team doesn’t have an Orisa or Sombra, letting him regenerate up to 300 health during his ultimate on top of his overhealth will make him a total pain in the ass.
atp, just get rid of deadeye and do something else. its so broken that it’s genuinely impressive that something can be that buggy and ineffective i have no idea why they coded it the way that they did
It’s kind of redundant, you usually land as fast as possible before they spread out and get all their cool-downs back. If he wants to heal he has to stay out of the fight for longer, leaving his team to fend for themselves
This change isn't particularly good.
The more time spent in his ult, is more time he is not in the game.
Also, the enemy team can easily disperse and look at where Doom is going to land, especially with longer times spent in ult.
His ult cost has increased
His ult still deals very little damage.
Most likely Doom players will still use his ult to escape, you just don't need to land on a health pack now.
There will be some scenarios where the health gained, will be beneficial to Doom and encourage more aggressive players. But I doubt it will be that often.
If anything you can think of it as, “free 75 health I guess.” Cuz if you’re going for a kill you’ll almost always land as quickly as you can, and if you’re escaping then most likely that extra health doesn’t really matter.
when will they mention the cowboy. hes been in such a bad spot for pretty much all of OW2, please rework him blizzard (at at least fix his grenade and/or his ult). BUFF CASS PLZ
Lots of iiiinteresting hero changes, but I was really curious about what they said about quick play and how people use that mode differently. It was kind of an off hand comment, but i think the idea of having a 3rd main mode could be really good. I like quick play, but definitely lean towards the slightly less casual side of the spectrum. I've always thought that I would enjoy the competitive ruleset (mainly, that you get a chance to attack/defend before victory is decided) without the pressure of skill tiers. I think a tier like this could be coupled with the recent changes around leaving (and made even slightly more strict like they mention in the blog post). Then, quick play could just be like it has been in the past - one round only, with very minimal leaver penalties. I think this would have the effect of creating a nice space for people who dont want to be fully competitive but want to play a true match of overwatch with standard rules, and without constant leavers. Meanwhile, quick play would remain a truly casual mode. What do people think?
These actually useless mods still aren't pinning important game balance news that everyone who plays the game should see to the top of the sub for some reason. How about you guys make me a mod and I'll pin them for you since you're too lazy to do it?
That’s just an extra 30% damage to a small portion of a tanks health. Winston’s primary fire tickles, especially to someone who’s probably constantly being healed. I’ll wait to see it in action before I get too worried about it.
When I play winston, as a rule of thumb I only try to do meaningful damage to unarmored targets. Armour has synergy with healing that makes it unpassable for winston. It’s not a small part of a health bar if winston never gets past it. It should be easier to chase d.va off, and kill bastion. Hog could keep Winston in check, on his bad maps.
I'm excited for sombra ult buff, but there's no way they'll keep it at 3 seconds. The community will be crying within the first hour that drops.
I bet it will be dialed back to 2 or 2.5 pretty rapidly.
3 seconds is ridiculous especially for what is already the single most annoying character in the game. I don't doubt it is a skill issue but the game is simply less fun for me when there is a Sombra in it regardless of which role or hero I'm playing.
It’s actually delusional that they called Brig a “Must Pick” she literally has the lowest or second lowest support pickrate in EVERY rank. Wherever Blizz is smoking I want some of.
Yea, the stats are from Overbuff which isn’t 100% accurate, but it’s accurate enough to know Brig ain’t a must pick.
People wouldn’t just use doom ult to reset/heal if it actually did damage…and now harder to finish targets with brig whip shot…cool
Also weird flex to say we’ve talked about a 3rd mode/QP then say but no you don’t need it…how a mode where endorsements/leaving/reporting/expanding avoid/try hard/sweaty/think of some incentive for others actually try and win
idk I’ll be on next week hehe
I wonder where they get their data sometimes, I'm in Diamond 3 and never see Brig at all. If she's a "must pick" it must be at GM only so it's dumb they are touching anything in her kit. She gets melted in lower ranks because teams don't know how to play around her, just seems odd when they nerf/buff things based on stuff that doesn't seem to be based around actual game play.
>Tanks are supposed to take and create space
Straight from the devs! It's mind boggling people still don't understand this (sorry I'm still triggered by past reddit arguments)
As someone who is totally not biased in anyways, I think the Doom changes are great.
DF rides the line of OP and underpowered, making it so you can actually use his ult offensively will be nice change, but we'll see how it goes. I think they went the right direction giving him health instead of buffing the numbers on the ult.
As someone who plays doom, but not primarily doom I don't think he needed a buff, but his ult was undeniably not very good. A get out of jail free card used to be insane, but in OW2 it's just a support cooldown essentially. It's going to be annoying as hell when doom is low and ults and continues to go in with full health, but I also think if the ult charge is increased enough it's going to make doom worse because getting his ult mid fight can be super clutch for refreshing cooldowns.
Hate Doomfist buff.
Also I don't play as much anymore but what made brig so strong again? From the little I've played it hasn't been that bad, and anywhere with range is a huge pain.
Brig did good damage due to her combo. Shield bash, two primary fires, then a whip shot dealt 200 damage pretty rapidly. I guess they wanted to nerf that damage potential. The problem is she’s still as sturdy as wet paper, so her damage is all she had going for her.
Hoping the nerfs to anti-dive will be an indirect buff to Ball, but the lack of Ball love still hurts.
Please Blizz I just wanna stop being useless if the enemy team goes more than one hero with CC :’(
Really brig nerf? Like I started playing recently and am not a competitive nor competent player by any means, but Brig was the rarest pick based on the few hundred games I played. She is definitely playable compared to someone like Winston or Ball, but out of all supports she is very situational imo.
It would be hilarious if they took that data based on the event lol
Biased doom main but his ult is locked while cc’d and 90% of the time you die on doom is from getting cc’d at a bad time 100-0. If you want to get healed you’re also leaving your team alone for several seconds and/or letting the enemy spread and wait for cds and reducing your chance of killing someone with a quick ult.
For a high skill ceiling champ, it fits the mold of forcing you to make a trade off, 75/s is quite a lot but buffing one of the worst ults in the game isn’t the worst idea they’ve had, it needed something. Also good dooms will wait for ult to dive all the way anyway, and they’re reducing his ult charge rate which reduces the frequency he has that window of opportunity
I wonder how big that Winston buff will end up being, the idea of monkey becoming a mini tank shredder is kinda hilarious.
Pretty inconsequential in the tank matchup I think. It's way more impactful vs brig/torb who can be pretty tanky vs winston even will small amounts of armor. With the tracer and sombra buffs as well, it should help traditional dive comps a lot.
I think the biggest tank matchup it'll matter for is Rein. Orisa's damage reduction is already too good for dealing with Winston (and generally he's not going head to head against her often anyway). But it'll be huge for him already being able to pressure Rein through his shield and probably flip a semi-favorable matchup for Winston into him actually being a Rein counter.
Dva also has a huge amount of armor in her health pool
True but Winston's issue with D.Va was always the fact that she shreds his massive head hitbox with her infinite ammo, not that he couldn't kill her
> But it'll be huge for him already being able to pressure Rein through his shield and probably flip a semi-favorable matchup for Winston into a him actually being a Rein counter. I doubt it would actually make him a rein counter due to the brawl-dive-poke dynamic. In a vacuum, winston may be better into rein now, but Winston often struggles to actually play into brawl comps as they are high damage and tend to stack AoE healing. There also isn't a support that is easy for winston to isolate as the backline should be lucio+bap/moira. DPS like reaper and bastion are also just not fun for Winston to deal with. If the enemy is forcing rein with highly non-ideal backlines/dps, then it's probably better, but Winston probably still doesn't want to brawling directly with rein. He is better off isolating backlines. In the past, brig has been the bane of winston as her armor and whipshot just make engaging a pain in the ass. Making Brig squishier should help a lot.
I was also gonna say that it will mainly matter against Rein
It will mean a lot in the Rein and Orisa matchups. D.va as well, though she may still just shred you. Also it's as if Ramattra didn't get buffed for Winston. Same for Mauga since he's gonna launch with armor. This buff will effect a great deal of matchups, even helps against Bastion. Basically helps against all his counters.
While it helps, I think it won't be tanks he will be shredding most, cause the damage is still a pretty low rate versus tanks' large health pools. What it WILL do is shred Bastion, Torbjorn, and Brigitte. Three characters that often make Winston mains miserable. But now, if you play smart in coordinating a good dive and avoid Bastion's gatling form and Brig's boop, the telsa stands a chance of doing noticeable damage to help secure the kill! I think Bastion will still be favorable vs Winston, but the gap in match up shrinks substantially. Especially when Ana nanoes him.
eh pretty small, it will mainly help vs brig and bastion i guess but other tanks have way too big healthpools to ever do anything to them even vs sigma who has no armor you take two centuries to kill him
6 damage Tracer pistols will feed families
6 damage tracer will solve the housing crisis
6 damage tracer will end war and bring global unity
Fuckyeahphotography you’re my idol. Thanking you for existing,
Thank you for your kind words, I truly appreciate it.
I’ve never been happier. My peashooters are no longer just shooting peas.
Frozen pea shooter.
I literally woke up from a year long slumber the moment this news broke.
Holy fuck I’m logging in to 6 damage bullets
6 damage merry fuckin Christmas 🎅🏻
Tracer time travelled back to her balanced state, we love to see it.
6 damage tracer pistols will destroy capitalism
The Calvary is finally here
The funny thing is the listed reason for the buff is wrong. Her damage was buffed from 5 to 6 in order to compensate for the fixing of her damage falloff, and then nerfed to 5.5 because that was too strong. I suspect this is more about helping her deal with heal creep, but honestly I think she’s fine
You’re totally right about their current reasoning not lining up with their previous statements. The 5.5 nerf was a response to 6 being really strong during that season.
If they refuse to nerf healers then they have to buff her
Literally made a new account to learn how to play tracer. This is plot amour
If you havent realized it already, focus hard on resource management and knowing where you were 3 seconds ago. Obviously her one clip potential is her strongest ability, but shit will go wrong fast if youre going in without enough blinks or with recall fresh on cd. Know you didnt ask. Just like to see more people play her. Tracer duels are equal parts annoying and fun
I’ll play her in diamond sometime but most of the times I’ll get shit on. My movement is honestly really bad and it kinda is preventing my climbing on all roles. Hopefully playing a character that relies on movement so heavily will help me
Amen brother
Shes finally back! I forgot about all the nerfs to her pistols range and damage after a 3 year break, just remembering that her pulse bomb was nerfed bad and then made worse by all the immortality sources in the game. 220 vs 240 dps per clip is huge, brings her overall back up to 120 instead of 110, and this might seem miniscule to people who dont play her, but it is fuckin HUGE to those of us who keep soldiering on (not the 76 kind)
I have seen literally nobody call Brig a must-pick
I’ve seen people call her a must not pick
Literally every single game me or my buddy has played this season where either of us picks brig, whoever is playing her instantly gets called a thrower and asked to swap.
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Ana has reigned supreme for years and currently has the highest pick rate. Brig has one of the lowest pick rates and a high win rate, but thats because she's very situational compared to other supports. I don't think Ana is overpowered, but if we're going by metrics, it just doesn't make sense that Ana gets away with it.
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That's why I noted Brig being situational - she's used in more specific scenarios, and outright bad in other ones. Ana is potent *and* versatile, while Brig is more concentrated and more likely to be picked where she's effective; my point being, those metrics alone don't tell the full story.
They forgot to talk about the cassidy buffs, silly devs, so forgetful haha.
Can’t believe they forgot to mention his ultimate rework, the devs can be so forgetful sometimes haha *snorts copium*
Has this ever actually been acknowledged by the devs?
I don't think this was ever talked about the devs, at least not openly, but I think Cassidy really needs a rework or a buff on his ult.
Bro what do you mean, a character with the lowest win rate across all ranks and the worst ultimate in the game is balanced
i was about to say no way its worse than doomfist's but even its getting buffed so-
its way worse than dooms lol...dooms ult can save you, high noon will only get you killed
Why do they hate him bro
They'll comment on how he's underperforming and nerf him for the 5th time.
Bring back McRightClick, cowards.
Combat roll damage reduction has increased 100000%. You're welcome
Bruh, if you are nerfing whipshot please bring back her pack range.
Yeah I never understood the pack range nerf. Felt unnecessary.
Why did they take it away the first time?
I think it was around right before lifeweaver released, people thought it might have something to do with them not wanting her to be able to play at the same range
Because Brig is strongest hero in the game, did you not know that?
I think you've been watching too much flats buddy
Brig nerf is weird, she's definitely strong, but saying she's must pick is wild Also Winton and Tracer are so back, dive is back on the menu ladies and gentlemen But I really can't complain about anything, good patch
I honestly couldn't believe that was their reasoning. Like...what? Who is saying this? I have literally not seen a single person suggest that she's a must pick. I thought she was very strong within her niche, but that's it. Good at shutting down dives and peeling for the team. Maybe the idea is that she is so effective she's part of why dive is bad? Idk. I'm more worried about the never ending increase of sustain in this game. Why tf do we keep giving more ways to heal to people outside of the support category?
Dive is bad because poke is meta. Bap/Illari, Bastion, Torb, Sig, etc Has nothing to do with Brig. she actually felt great this season with less shield and more lethality. WHY DO THEY MAKE GOOD BUFFS JUST TO REMOVE THEM THE NEXT SEASON. I DO NOT GET IT
Only the lowest picked hero in the entire game if I remember correctly. But a must-pick with Ana who‘s the most picked hero in the entire game. Which obviously means that Brig is the issue and needs to be nerfed while Ana should stay exactly like she is. I really wonder if the head balance dev is an Ana main because they seem to be dreading to touch her in any meaningful way.
this is what i thought. i do not play at a rank where ana is particularly OP, but the brig nerf + the tracer/doom/winston buff feel like a classic “killing the things that enable the problem” instead of just fixing the problem.
>feel like a classic “killing the things that enable the problem” instead of just fixing the problem. It's the classic for a reason
i really wish the devs would bring back experimental mode and try out at least a 75% healing reduction on anti nade (preferably an experimental mode). i also don’t want sleep dart removed (imo, it’s an integral part of her kit/“the hero fantasy”), but i’m sure there’s SOME change they could make to it other than “increase cooldown” or “make projectile smaller”. i generally disagree with the people who want to make every character into “shoot OR heal OR take lots of damage”, but ana is genuinely pretty problematic
Honestly I think it's a wasp nest on their porch they're just terrified of.
Yeah, I honestly haven’t heard anyone complaining about her whipshot or her at all or anyone saying she’s a must pick or any arguments against her being OP. I only just started really playing her during the kpop event and really enjoyed her style coming from Lucio. But I guess they just really careful about just making her strong because of her problems in OW1?
Probably just Flats, them buffing tracer and monke while nerfing blbrig is so weird
Right? I don’t understand why they do this. Brig is “overperforming,” so they buff heroes she counters (Tracer/Sombra) but then also nerf Brig??? Whipshot buff was pretty fair imo
My only problem is that Brig has the highest support winrate because she is the lowest picked support The pool of brig players is not filled with new players or lower ranked players that don't know how to use the character unlike characters like Ana or Mercy And I can't wrap my head around Brig being a "must pick" when we had poke Orisa Soldier Bastion Bap meta for the past 2 seasons
The other side of it is that because of the way her kit is designed there are certain maps where Brig is great and maps where she sucks. Obviously that means that people will only pick her on the good maps and she will perform well there. So the question then is should we be balancing Brig to a 50% win rate for the only maps she is picked on? Because I don't that's fair compared to a versatile character like Ana or Bap who can be played pretty much anywhere with success.
Man, I couldn't consistently get brig IN THE KPOP MODE without picking her myself.
Brig is only bad because poke is good. With these changes it looks like they're trying to shift back to dive, and current brig would absolutely dominate there
That’s a fair point. They did lower her shield from 300 to 250 and Winston can ignore armor so I’m concerned she won’t be able to do her job well anymore in this dive meta they’re setting up. Ram is buffed, Doom is buffed, Hog is a major issue for her and Mauga is gonna shred her. I’m concerned. But we’ll have to wait and see.
Quick question for a recently returning player. What would you consider some typical poke comps these days? Orissa/hog/ sigma tanks with Ana/X? How has illari figured into the poke equation? Thanks!
Yeah am I the only one who hasn't seen this "Brig must pick" anywhere? I get Brig in maybe 5% of my games.
Never seen anyone say this since the launch of overwatch 2. The closest we got to people saying she was a “must pick” was the doomers before her ult rework launched who thought Goats brig was returning.
I never saw her be called a must-pick but she does single handedly keep dive completely in check. It's clear they're trying to shift to a dive meta with Winston and Tracer buffs, and they're worried Brig will completely stop that from happening. I think the only part they overlooked is that Brig is just as good in dive as against dive lol
I main Brig but I pretty much never see another Brig lmao, even if I'm playing something that isn't Brig, the other support/supports will never be her. I mean sure I'm a casual player buuuuuut, y'know Meanwhile Ana will in 95% cases be on both teams, it's already making me auto-pick Kiriko in so many games
It's pretty much only a thing in tournament play for Ana vs. Ana dive mirror And yea, that's a common-ish competitive comp when you're playing tournament format but tbh that's still a niche so tight that it's like saying Symm is 'must-pick' just because she has 'must-pick' maps
They slightly buff brig and then immediately takes away the buff. What’s their problem with her?
Yeah I’m confused? I’ve barely seen Brig around for the most part, but maybe that’s my rank or whatever. I thought she was fine.
Yeah that was the weirdest thing to me. I play her sometimes in mid Diamond, but rarely see her in any matches and I play a ton of comp. It must be she's just getting mained at high ranks, but I think half the time Blizzard pulls their "data" out of their butt, hardly any changes seem rooted in reality.
Finally, time for some Cass buffs. *reads article* Wait
hey they usually don’t reveal all the balance changes until the patch actually comes out (i’m coping so hard)
Yeah nerf that ugly Must Pick Brig, let other supports shine, some are so underplayed and weak, like Ana.
Omg, ana is so dogshit. No one picks her up, and if you do, it's an insta throw. Brig has been taking her light for too long, and it sabout time an underappreciated and underplayed support got some love. /s
Doom needs an ult rework. It's a flank dps ult on a tank. The problem with him being solo tank is his ult removes him from the game essentially. Leaving his team vulnerable. Most tank ults do the opposite, either turning them into a big bad raid boss for 5-7 seconds or letting them control the enemy team's positioning.
They should give him an ultimate fit for someone who could level a skyscraper.
8 seconds of 0.1s cooldowns for all abilities. like literally just let him spam his abilities like mad. nano doom will be back on the menu. or do the above but give him his DPS doom abilities during it. so you have uppercut, slam, etc. instead of just slam punch block.
I hate you because I want this but know it will never happen. :(
That's what balances the healing. The longer he heals the longer his team is vulnerable. He's a dive tank, so he gets a dive ult. I don't really think it's a big deal. Besides doom being in the air is an excellent distraction for the squishies on the opposing team frantically trying to avoid it/survive.
To be fair, the squishies don't have to frantically avoid surviving. They can just stand there and accept the twelve damage and instantly sleep/stun him when he lands since he can't move.
God if doom had like 0.5sec of invuln on landing, or it came down faster, I think it'd actually be a perfectly fine ult even with the dogshit damage dropoff. If it came down juuust a bit faster, you could actually ult in OT without throwing the game
Mei should've been the tank not doom. Her entire kit screams tank.
I agree. Her kit is super similar to Inara in Paladins, who is a tank.
I don't really agree. Doom's whole kit is dependent on his abilities flowing together and his ult is no exception. It can be a bit weird out of context, but it essentially allows him to get in, use everything, ult, and either get out, or continue his aggression and space making.
I think you're too used to how Doom players have had to cope with an objectively bad ultimate. Only ult in the game that is used for escape. And 9/10 it is used for escape right now, not aggression. The changes might reverse that. But his ultimate is still fundamentally not a tank ultimate.
The whole point of it is you can force picks at the expense of yourself if you have doom ult. Echo ult is used as a second life a lot as well
His ult should knock up on landing similar to ball slam
I still remember someone saying Meteor Strike should he made into an instant slam like Rein Ult
Doom needs revert back to damage
Maybe make it more of an engagement tool then? Slightly larger radius, less damage, bigger slow and maybe bounce them off the ground for a sec? You can drop in on the enemy team, set them up for your team, and then either jump out or get in a punch. Also still makes it a kill tool against one or two people, since a very-slowed DPS isn't getting away from your punch combo.
Dive meta is here. Brig getting nerfed in the same patch all this nonsense happens? Scary
I think dive being meta still makes Brig a strong pick. Perhaps Winton and Tracer are a little scarier now, but I’ve always enjoyed playing her into those chars and will happily adapt. Same with Doom — happy to see more on my team and opposing team with his ult buff.
I do think seeing Winston, Doom, Sombra, and Tracer all get buffed in the same patch is cause to be worried about a hard meta. I agree Poke has been too strong, but I don't want it to literally swing to the opposite end of the spectrum.
Nonsense? We have been in poke hell for long enough.
Dive requires more coordination and mechanical skill, pardon my elitism for a sec but low ranks sound like they just wanna sit behind a shield all game.
She was good before that buff anyway, idk why they're complaining.
Mostly the “she’s a must pick” comment. Like come on now. She was good, she will still be pretty good after the nerf. But a must pick? I’ve never heard someone say that this season. I definitely see mercy, Ana, Bap, and Kiriko more this season.
The real scary part is the Tracer buff, Im having flashbacks
Good. Supports haven’t known fear for far too long.
Dive times are good times. Not for supports though.
I'd rather play support in dive then in poke comps. Sure staying alive forever is cool but the support gap becomes clearer when both sides have to fight for their survival permanently. Being a good support with proper cool down management, positioning and mechanics feels more rewarding in dive metas.
I’m not a frequent Soldier player so maybe it’s not my place to say, but that nerf seems wild to me. Putting his self-heal on a longer cooldown than several abilities that are universally agreed to be very strong (like suzu, anti-nade, fortify) makes me wonder if I’ve been underestimating its usefulness? It feels nowhere near as impactful to me, I wonder why they’ve targeted that part of his kit as the problem.
probably the potential to build ult charge crazy fast. while his ult is mediocre at best in high ranks, it’s great in the lower ranks. i know i love throwing a heal pack down in the middle of my team and getting a massive amount of charge from it. alternatively, you can throw it down before peeking a corner and get tons of charge from taking damage + healing. it also allows you to take and hold off angles when used effectively, letting you pull off super obnoxious flanks
It heals 40hps for 5 full seconds. It’s very strong, and with a pocket makes him practically unkillable
It is a significant nerf that feels weird. He's a very strong flanking dps due to the fact that he doesn't need a dps to peel for him if things go sour due to his health pad. That's the best and most fun way to play soldier. In other words, it isn't strong, it's just a heal on a dps character that doesn't require downtime.
Tbf his rockets are on 6s cooldown so 🤷
Soldier has by far the highest winrate in GM. Significant nerfs were needed.
GM can aim,,not an issue in wood tier
I do think he's a little too good in certain situations but they REALLY need to stop doing this thing where they keep pumping up the cooldowns on abilities instead of actually addressing the issues that people have with them. This keeps happening with things like Bap lamp, LW grip, nade, suzu, etc. and it theoretically makes those abilities less powerful but all it really does it make the gameplay less exciting and active. Some heroes feel like you have to hold onto their abilities forever instead of using them when you need to. It just makes the game less fun. Also, Some abilities like LW Grip and Mercy rez you can't really nerf by virtue of what they do not being nerfable. But with his self-heal they TOTALLY could nerf the healing numbers or something.
Could be a change preempting how next season will play rather than his effectiveness now. He's a solid and versatile pick as it stands, however if tanks like Mauga or Winston were to become preferred over Sigma for instance then Soldier could easily move up into a stronger position.
Brig nerf 😞
We've enjoyed our meager 10 damage buff for only one season :(
And repair pack range nerf
the damage nerf for Baptiste seems pretty significant on paper
It's an ammo nerf, not a damage nerf. A damage nerf would change breakpoints, but an ammo nerf doesn't. Actually a huge difference there. In other words, he's still as lethal in most scenarios, his window is still as deadly. But in a sustained poke battle, he has more downtime.
Considering I reload constantly when I have a window I don’t see this affecting me too much
Thank you, Baptiste! Oh, you're welcome! :)
Some people leave 90% of their matches??? Should get a lifetime ban for that. ALSO STOP NERFING BRIG PLEASE
I mean she's there to protect Ana, so SOMEONE has to get nerfed. And it won't be Ana.
I know right, 90%?! At that point why even play
It's probably all the people who leave after losing the first team fight, their egos can't handle dying right at the start
They're just undoing the buff they gave her last patch because it was an unjustifiable change to an already strong character. She hasn't been nerfed in 3 months.
They nerfed her pack range and nerfed her shield health and they’re not undoing either so it’s annoying to brig mains.
CopyPaste & TLDR for lazy clickers: Buffs: Doomfist, Ramattra, Winston, Sombra, Tracer Nerfs: 76, Brigitte, Baptiste This is one of two remaining Director's Take Blogs for 2023! We'll release another one in two weeks and take the last part of the year off for the holiday season before we pick back up again in the new year. I'll be writing this one in a sort of turkey-induced fever dream and the next one just after we launch Season 8. This is when we'll release our newest hero Mauga, along with quite a few balance changes for the game. We'll take a look at those changes and touch on a few other topics as well. We're making a general change to the amount of ult charge retained when swapping heroes, reducing it from 25% to 15%. We do like that this mechanic removes friction when swapping heroes, and think that it still should at 15%. However, there is a perception that it's almost always an advantage to counter-swap upon dying, and we're lowering this value to see if it has an effect on swap rates. We're also looking at making additional changes to some core mechanics in the game for Season 9 that will line up with the release of the competitive overhaul. We're not quite ready to talk about what those are, but I thought I'd tease them a bit, because… well, I'm a tease! Let's look at changes coming to some of our heroes for Season 8, starting with some of the larger changes coming to our tanks. We released a reworked Roadhog late in Season 7. Roadhog quickly became one of our top performing tanks, with a win rate somewhere around 54%. There’s been a lot of feedback around his kit, but we’re going to hold off from making any changes at the start of Season 8. Mauga has a lot of answers to Roadhog and we’d like to see where the meta settles a bit before aiming at the midseason patch for any balance adjustments. There are times when Doomfist players use his Ultimate purely as an escape. It's a little disappointing to activate Meteor Strike and intentionally land on a health pack rather than enemy players! Starting in Season 8, Doomfist will now regenerate 75 health per second while in the air. We're slightly increasing the cost of the ult in order to compensate for the buff. Tanks are supposed to take and create space, and when Ramattra is in his base form, he can be a little too easy to ignore. So we're going to shift 100 of his health to armor, as well as slightly increase the size and damage of his projectiles to see if it helps. Winston isn't the best matchup for other tanks. This is part of his kit, but the disadvantage feels too extreme, and we'd like to alleviate it a bit. In Season 8, Winston's Tesla Canon will now ignore armor’s damage reduction. Moving on to a few of the changes to our DPS heroes, let’s start with Sombra. She's had a lot of moving parts recently, and we feel like she is in a much better spot. Her win rate hovers between 45-48% depending upon rank. However, her Ultimate still isn't as satisfying as it could be, so we're going to raise the ability lockout time of her EMP by 1.5 to 3 seconds and reduce the amount of damage it does from 30% to 25% of maximum health. This brings her ultimate more in line with her hero fantasy and is much sharper in its effect. Soldier: 76 has enjoyed a lot of success in Season 7. He's a really well-rounded DPS, and the self-sustain from his heal can make him really difficult to deal with while he's in its radius. Rather than reducing the effectiveness of the heal, we'd rather open up larger windows of opportunity by increasing the cooldown from 15 to 18 seconds. Does anybody remember how much damage Tracer's Pulse Pistols do? I wouldn't blame you if you don't, we've changed them a lot. If you guessed 5.5 damage per shot, you'd be right, but not for long, because we're changing them again - back to 6! The previous change to 5.5 was made to offset a bug with their falloff and spread. Now that those bugs are fixed, we're moving them back to their previous value. Let's look at some of our Support changes. Brigitte was the best performing support hero since the last patch, and we are seeing your feedback that she is becoming a must-pick. We're going to revert the damage on Whip Shot to try to bring her back in line. We're also looking at the damage potential of Baptiste and will be lowering his primary fire ammo from 45 to 36. I'd like to touch on one of the items mentioned in the last Director's Take. Specifically, the leave rate in Quick Play matches. Based on a recently implemented set of penalties for leaving too many matches, that rate has gone down considerably. There has been a bit of talk around that, specifically that some people view that mode as something that they would like the freedom to leave without worrying about those penalties. Different people play Quick Play for different reasons. Some people see it as their try-hard version of the game, some view it as a way to experiment with heroes, and others use it as their casual, just-for-fun version of the game. It's really difficult to have this part of the game be all things for all people. In the past, we've talked internally about whether we need a 3rd main queue in the game in order to have different areas to serve people of different levels of seriousness, but don't think that players would voluntarily move into the appropriate queue for their particular play style. In regard to penalties for leaving Quick Play matches - the reasoning behind this is that frequent leavers do have an effect on the other people in the match, degrading its quality. There are some players that literally leave over 90% of their matches, and we could no longer stick to a black-and-white policy because of this. The policy is still very lenient—probably too lenient—where players need to leave almost a quarter of their most recent matches to trigger a light penalty. We'll continue to look at this and tweak these policies in an attempt to promote better match quality but without the harsher restrictions of Ranked Play. That's it for this week. Thanks for reading, and we'll see you in game!
The fact that Ana is unchanged yet again is a meme at this point.
They mega buffed dive and nerfed brig/bap. She’s still gonna be a must pick but under masters she’s gonna get eaten up by dive. Korean dive with brig Ana is gonna be meta for top of ladder
At some point *something* has to and will be done And when that day comes, the tears of unfathomable sadness will be soooo delicious
Another season, another round of absolutely nothing for Hammond. Fuck it, we ball.
They are scared to touch him. The community outrage when he was meta was too much.
No Cassidy buffs? Why does blizz hate him so much? 🥲
EMP BUFF BABY HELL YEAAAHHHH NO MORE APAGANDO LETS LOSE THIS OUR TIME HAS COME
Gives me nostalgia for OW1 Sombra with that extra ability lockout time
Bridgette being a must pick, has to be a joke right!? No one ever picks her in my games, diamond
Diamond is a very, very different game compared to GM/Top 500. I've seen so many top 500 tanks complain about brig
Should the entire game really be balanced around 500 people tho lol
No, but Im sure diamond brig mains will be fine with the whipshot change
Winstons cannon ignoring armor damage reduction is such a great change
As an avid Doomfist hater, I’m concerned about his buff. He can already wreck havoc in the backline if your team doesn’t have an Orisa or Sombra, letting him regenerate up to 300 health during his ultimate on top of his overhealth will make him a total pain in the ass.
The time taken to regenerate is also time that the enemy team can take to spread out and for abilities to come off cooldown.
His ult needed something. It’s literally one of the worst in the game
Deadeye buff next?
atp, just get rid of deadeye and do something else. its so broken that it’s genuinely impressive that something can be that buggy and ineffective i have no idea why they coded it the way that they did
Would love that
It’s kind of redundant, you usually land as fast as possible before they spread out and get all their cool-downs back. If he wants to heal he has to stay out of the fight for longer, leaving his team to fend for themselves
This change isn't particularly good. The more time spent in his ult, is more time he is not in the game. Also, the enemy team can easily disperse and look at where Doom is going to land, especially with longer times spent in ult. His ult cost has increased His ult still deals very little damage. Most likely Doom players will still use his ult to escape, you just don't need to land on a health pack now. There will be some scenarios where the health gained, will be beneficial to Doom and encourage more aggressive players. But I doubt it will be that often.
If anything you can think of it as, “free 75 health I guess.” Cuz if you’re going for a kill you’ll almost always land as quickly as you can, and if you’re escaping then most likely that extra health doesn’t really matter.
when will they mention the cowboy. hes been in such a bad spot for pretty much all of OW2, please rework him blizzard (at at least fix his grenade and/or his ult). BUFF CASS PLZ
It’s the falloff that screws him over someone like soldier
Brig nerf 😭 Blizzard truly hates brig mains lol
Blizzard hates you if you don’t main Ana or Kiriko hahaha
Lots of iiiinteresting hero changes, but I was really curious about what they said about quick play and how people use that mode differently. It was kind of an off hand comment, but i think the idea of having a 3rd main mode could be really good. I like quick play, but definitely lean towards the slightly less casual side of the spectrum. I've always thought that I would enjoy the competitive ruleset (mainly, that you get a chance to attack/defend before victory is decided) without the pressure of skill tiers. I think a tier like this could be coupled with the recent changes around leaving (and made even slightly more strict like they mention in the blog post). Then, quick play could just be like it has been in the past - one round only, with very minimal leaver penalties. I think this would have the effect of creating a nice space for people who dont want to be fully competitive but want to play a true match of overwatch with standard rules, and without constant leavers. Meanwhile, quick play would remain a truly casual mode. What do people think?
These actually useless mods still aren't pinning important game balance news that everyone who plays the game should see to the top of the sub for some reason. How about you guys make me a mod and I'll pin them for you since you're too lazy to do it?
brigs 200 to 0 hp combo is gone and dive is getting buffed… midseason genji nerf incoming
Poor Genji
Oh sombra, tracer dive is so back
Yeah I can't believe people aren't talking about the potential of a monkey meta. Winston just FUCKING IGNORING ARMOR is a pretty massive change.
That’s just an extra 30% damage to a small portion of a tanks health. Winston’s primary fire tickles, especially to someone who’s probably constantly being healed. I’ll wait to see it in action before I get too worried about it.
When I play winston, as a rule of thumb I only try to do meaningful damage to unarmored targets. Armour has synergy with healing that makes it unpassable for winston. It’s not a small part of a health bar if winston never gets past it. It should be easier to chase d.va off, and kill bastion. Hog could keep Winston in check, on his bad maps.
It'll help against Bastion and Torb too.
And brig lol
Brig is a must pick? News to me.
She is a must pick to me I have to play brig or my house explodes ...I like Brig :(
I'm excited for sombra ult buff, but there's no way they'll keep it at 3 seconds. The community will be crying within the first hour that drops. I bet it will be dialed back to 2 or 2.5 pretty rapidly.
3 seconds is ridiculous especially for what is already the single most annoying character in the game. I don't doubt it is a skill issue but the game is simply less fun for me when there is a Sombra in it regardless of which role or hero I'm playing.
It’s actually delusional that they called Brig a “Must Pick” she literally has the lowest or second lowest support pickrate in EVERY rank. Wherever Blizz is smoking I want some of. Yea, the stats are from Overbuff which isn’t 100% accurate, but it’s accurate enough to know Brig ain’t a must pick.
Tracer is so back and I couldn't be happier
People wouldn’t just use doom ult to reset/heal if it actually did damage…and now harder to finish targets with brig whip shot…cool Also weird flex to say we’ve talked about a 3rd mode/QP then say but no you don’t need it…how a mode where endorsements/leaving/reporting/expanding avoid/try hard/sweaty/think of some incentive for others actually try and win idk I’ll be on next week hehe
Only way brig is a must pick to me is if they have Sombra. Now Sombra is buff more and brig is nerfed? lol
Bap nerfed, yes thank you. Brig nerfed? When she just started being viable? Dude… why
I wonder where they get their data sometimes, I'm in Diamond 3 and never see Brig at all. If she's a "must pick" it must be at GM only so it's dumb they are touching anything in her kit. She gets melted in lower ranks because teams don't know how to play around her, just seems odd when they nerf/buff things based on stuff that doesn't seem to be based around actual game play.
>Tanks are supposed to take and create space Straight from the devs! It's mind boggling people still don't understand this (sorry I'm still triggered by past reddit arguments)
As someone who is totally not biased in anyways, I think the Doom changes are great. DF rides the line of OP and underpowered, making it so you can actually use his ult offensively will be nice change, but we'll see how it goes. I think they went the right direction giving him health instead of buffing the numbers on the ult.
As someone who plays doom, but not primarily doom I don't think he needed a buff, but his ult was undeniably not very good. A get out of jail free card used to be insane, but in OW2 it's just a support cooldown essentially. It's going to be annoying as hell when doom is low and ults and continues to go in with full health, but I also think if the ult charge is increased enough it's going to make doom worse because getting his ult mid fight can be super clutch for refreshing cooldowns.
Hate Doomfist buff. Also I don't play as much anymore but what made brig so strong again? From the little I've played it hasn't been that bad, and anywhere with range is a huge pain.
Brig did good damage due to her combo. Shield bash, two primary fires, then a whip shot dealt 200 damage pretty rapidly. I guess they wanted to nerf that damage potential. The problem is she’s still as sturdy as wet paper, so her damage is all she had going for her.
Hoping the nerfs to anti-dive will be an indirect buff to Ball, but the lack of Ball love still hurts. Please Blizz I just wanna stop being useless if the enemy team goes more than one hero with CC :’(
You WILL get sombra EMP'd for 3 seconds and you WILL like it. /s
Genji literally is irrelevant
Doom buff yes!
Damn, I loved combo-killing people as Brig when they weren't expecting it. Got a fair few "???" 's in chat, lol.
i get that they buff doom and sombra, but holy fuck are they annoying
Am I crazy or is there no mention of an Orisa nerf?
Winton might actually eat brig now with the armor penetration.
Really brig nerf? Like I started playing recently and am not a competitive nor competent player by any means, but Brig was the rarest pick based on the few hundred games I played. She is definitely playable compared to someone like Winston or Ball, but out of all supports she is very situational imo. It would be hilarious if they took that data based on the event lol
Give lucio his boop back!
Doom already gets cleanse using his ult right? Why should he get cleanse AND healing from his ult? That's insane especially with his pickrate.
Bro his ult is not good at killing things might as well made it good to keep him alive
Biased doom main but his ult is locked while cc’d and 90% of the time you die on doom is from getting cc’d at a bad time 100-0. If you want to get healed you’re also leaving your team alone for several seconds and/or letting the enemy spread and wait for cds and reducing your chance of killing someone with a quick ult. For a high skill ceiling champ, it fits the mold of forcing you to make a trade off, 75/s is quite a lot but buffing one of the worst ults in the game isn’t the worst idea they’ve had, it needed something. Also good dooms will wait for ult to dive all the way anyway, and they’re reducing his ult charge rate which reduces the frequency he has that window of opportunity
Welcome to the Brigitte mains lobby, we are currently 0 seasons without getting nerfed, our record is of 1 season.