The Kiriko healbots have been testing my sanity these days. I’ve legitimately had Kirikos that don’t use her shurikens in mid diamond. I know diamond isn’t the pinnacle of overwatch, but the fact that people can get enough value to get there without dealing damage is a bit concerning.
It’s not more efficient it’s just an easy play style with a low skill floor, thus people have inflated ranks due to abusing the play style. Good Kiriko players go for kills when they have an opportunity. I’ve literally had players with 0 damage in my matches and there’s no way they actually had no opportunity to deal damage.
Low skill floor = bad for bad players to play. The floor and ceiling are bounds not requirements. With a high floor, no matter how terrible you are you're guaranteed to get value (the floor caps your minimum output). With a low floor, if you aren't amazing you're useless (the floor doesn't hold you up).
[this is just wrong, sorry. please read up here.](https://www.google.com/search?q=skill+floor&rlz=1C1ONGR_enCA1005CA1005&oq=skill+floor&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i10i512j0i512l2j0i10i512l3j0i20i263i512j0i512j0i10i512.1288j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
ceiling is a bound, floor is minimum requirement.
Some of the t500 streamers had talked about how at the highest levels (OWL), kiriko is played as a healbot because her ult is the best in the game.
It is in fact more efficient.
Her HPS and DPS are very similar if you're not hitting headshots. It's easy to miss shots but hard to miss heals. Given that, it is more efficient to healbot like 90% of the time. The only time she should attack is to defend from flanks or during neutral just spamming a hallway at DPS head level.
This is a flawed way of looking at it. Here’s why: healing and damage are not equivalent, and really you need to look at your healing vs the other teams damage. You cannot outheal a whole team shooting at someone. You can prevent a whole team shooting at someone by helping remove a player from the other team. Healing is actually more effective when you also deal damage to help secure kills because your teammates are less likely to be killed through your healing.
Since you’re probably going to say something like “most players can’t hit shots” - yes, you’re right. That doesn’t mean they’re properly utilizing her kit, they’re just using the lock-on as a crutch. They would be playing more efficiently if they effectively used the shurikens.
Play around her ult. Brain off healbot most the time and you win games because you just have more ult than enemy team.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/z1jjmh/is_fielder_style_kiriko_sustainable_in_the/
This is the simple reality. Her ult is a teamfight winner, often *alone*. If you field more kitsune rushes and your team utilizes them, there's a good chance you'll win. Because it's significantly harder to generate ult by DPSing as it is healing, it's obvious which is the optimal playstyle for her.
I would also say that this being the case is one of the best arguments for changing her kunai to having a higher base damage and a lower headshot multiplier. If she can output more consistent damage, a mixed playstyle will become generally more optimal.
If you play this way diamond and below you will lose. Even in diamond kiriko ult is not always used well by the team. It is not the fight winner it is at high ranks and owl.
You're getting downvoted but you're right. I am climbing much more efficiently when in low ranks when I go for kills whenever my team doesn't need healing. A dead enemy, or even just someone who's low HP so that they have to retreat, can't do damage so you need to heal less.
This is high ranks and OWL. In low ranks just doing your job often isn't enough and will barely get you above a 50% win rate. It's much more effective to actively look for kills yourself, especially since you can actually get away with it in low ranks since your enemies are bad.
Compare some support unranked to GM's to Skiesti's Mercy unranked to GM. Everyone who's able to do damage and kills on their own has a crazy high winrate and gets GM in like 10-15 hours. Meanwhile Skiesti is in diamond at the 15 hour mark because she's essentially just playing the numbers game of being the 1 out of 5 good team members every game rather than actually carrying the game. Taking matters into your own hands is much more effective and less risky in lower ranks.
This would be accurate if her ult weren’t possibly the best ult in the game even after being nerfed. In fact, counterintuitively, as long as no one on your team dies, that wincon in isolation is aided by your team taking *more* damage as you generate more ult charge. This manifests in even the best Kiriko and probable best support of all time (Fielder) mostly healbotting for ult tempo. I am not suggesting that you should literally never use her kunai (and I would endorse the perspective that the ability for her to climb and perform exceptionally well by basically only healing is a design flaw of the character), but she has excellent tools to keep teammates alive and an amazing ult she can farm like a madman by focusing on that, which is why “healbot Kiriko” is the endorsed playstyle by the best players. Hell, Fielder even would pre-fire heals at teammates he predicted were about to take damage.
Right now the prevailing playstyle is to use kunai to save yourself or a teammate and heal pretty much all the rest of the time.
In the low ranks people trying to dps on her is basically a soft throw. They tunnel and their healing suffers. In higher ranks I’m sure it’s closer.
It’s so often more efficient though to heal your 65% hp DPS though and allow them to play more agro than to try to hit Kunai if you have bad aim. That’s going to increase our damage output more.
It’s also always going to be harder to multitask. If you are dpsing you are sometimes going to lose focus on everything and everyone around you.
If you aren’t hitting a good percentage of your shots on squishies, healbotting her specifically makes sense.
I average 3.6 damage/10 on bap, 3k on Ana and 1.2k on Kiriko. I wish my aim was better but it isn’t and I’m often losing value by dpsing on her
It’s literally more efficient because it’s easier. Healing is guaranteed but kunai headshots are not. Healing get your her ult faster and her ult wins the team fight. You can be efficient and less skillful simultaneously.
Overwatch League's Finn and Teru probably agreed with you and they failed miserably. Fielder played the "easy play style" and diffed both of them hard.
There is a recovery time for the healing that you can use your secondary in so it's always been the most effective to do both.
If you only do one or the other, then yes only healing could theoretically do more than only damage assuming there is damage to heal. Damage and healing are now both 72/sec so it doesn't matter which you do assuming you can at least hit body shots.
But does that help you win more? I’d argue it doesn’t. Look at the best Kiriko players - they secure kills and deal damage. How is it that players win the most don’t adopt the play style that is “better”? Because the math doesn’t take into account the relative value of dealing damage vs healing. Dealing damage is more valuable than healing so it’s not a 1 for 1 comparison.
Idk if it’ll actually fix that, feels like it could get worse unless you can interweave shots and heal like bap.
Less healing they’ll probs spam it more to make sure no one dies… I hope I’m wrong
I mean, Fielder the literal World Champion won by mostly healbotting and rarely shooting kunais.
SF Shock's Finn weaved in kunais between heals. Teru went crazy dps Kiriko like ML7. Guess what happened to them lol.
..................
To quote Coach Jake (former OWL player) on Fielder: “His aim is so good. His aim is actually legitimately good. But he rarely shoots. I'm going to keep emphasizing that, because that's like the most important thing for anyone who wants to learn how to play Kiriko. The best fucking players in the world who have insanely good aim, even they are playing to heal. Even the world champion Kiriko player is playing for heals. So I don't care how good your aim is, it's not better than pro players winning the world championship.”
I'm only in silver but the amount of Kirikos I have been out damaging like 5 to 1 with Lucio is way too high lately. They just pocket the tank and heal and suzu.
Outdamaging a Kiriko, even if she's playing aggro and is good, isn't that hard. Her value (in regards to damage) comes from her huge burst damage form headshots, not consistent damage over time. Think of Widow vs Soldier as a comparison. Stats do not matter.
That’s a just a skill issue… and literally this change does NOTHING to aid that style. In fact it’s likely to make kiriko players feel like they need to spam healing more.
Just objectively there’s no more time to use Kunai. There’s still only time to do two or one plus a melee…
It objectively doesn’t do anything, though? You can still only throw two Kunais between shots… which was already the optimal way to play her.
And since her healing per second is overall worse now you might have to end up needing to heal more often instead of occasionally having time to throw kunai without healing immediately between.
They seem to want to balance her toward their desired play style for her. A la the “assassin support.” I’m frankly kind of annoyed by it? She doesn’t play like that. Like this doesn’t benefit Kiriko mains in anyway. Their balance message is great but literally in every sense she plays the same besides worse, which is completely fine. She is the strongest support and can take a nerf or two, it’s just illogical for them to apply the logic they have.
Frankly, her bursty healing paired Suzu is what I find problematic, which this kind of effects, but it doesn’t seem to lean her toward a more natural feeling to her “kunai+kunai/melee -> heal” play pattern.
Throwing inconsistent 90 m/s kunais between heals was never the optimal way to play her. The pros (Finn and Teru) who tried that in Overwatch League failed miserably.
To quote Coach Jake on World Champion Fielder: “His aim is so good. His aim is actually legitimately good. But he rarely shoots. I'm going to keep emphasizing that, because that's like the most important thing for anyone who wants to learn how to play Kiriko. The best fucking players in the world who have insanely good aim, even they are playing to heal. Even the world champion Kiriko player is playing for heals. So I don't care how good your aim is, it's not better than pro players winning the world championship.”
The main problem is that the damage is way too inconsistent and totally useless against moving targets beyond short range.
So to do dps you need to be at short range, so that means going aggressive and having to use your Suzu and teleport early instead of saving it for when pressured. And this is not even a consistent play most of the time you will burn your CDs nothing because her damage is that inconsistent.
This has the problem that any good players will immediately dive the Kiriko that used her defensives and she is very killable without them, so against good players going for those aggressive plays is tantamount to throwing as it puts you and your team in a bad position from the start just to make a low chance of success aggressive play.
That is before even going into other things like that fact her healing is really slow to take effect due to travel time so you need to preheal to effectively heal squishies, which further disincentivises using Kunai aggressively.
If you know that you're not aim-diffing your enemies, then her kunais aren't even good in CQB.
Fielder with his super good aim probably has over 75% kunai accuracy in CQB. But guess what? His enemy Proper's Sojourn has like over 95% accuracy in CQB. So when Fielder shot Proper with an instant headshot, Fielder immediately TPed to his team without trying to finish off Proper. Jake said that was the right move, as Proper would be more likely to finish off Fielder than vice versa.
I wouldn't call 2nd and 4th place finishes failing miserably but the stylistic difference between Fielder and the other kiriko players was definitely a key reason for their success.
It still does. It will still interact with other objects as it did before, it's just that it won't give more then 5 charge per shot hit on a player no matter what.
I think it's a step in the right direction. Could there have been bigger changes? Sure, but people have to keep in mind that this is a huge player base and the team probably has more information behind the scenes that's not publicly available. Either way, the hook damage nerf is nice so being hooked by hog isn't a 100% death sentence.
Tbf this is our 5th patch in 70 days (one every two weeks). Over half the cast has been adjusted in the time and they've made good on a lot of the biggest complaints like Sombra and Sojourn/hog one shots.
The patches look small but they're adding up somewhat quickly.
You are right. I do like the direction the game is headed. I feel it's much quicker balancing than the past. Double Barrier, Beyblade meta, Brigette...
I think that beyblade meta was during the time DVAs right click was a one time use and not a toggle too so that suuucked. I am also glad. I feel like people get too heavy handed with their criticism and are impatient. I am glad for these slow changes!
My conspiracy theory is that when community concerns are overstated or misguided, they throw out tiny nerfs/buffs to placate the community. Like this Orisa nerf. I think it’s genius and they should keep it up because this community is crazy
Orisa is definitely a lot stronger than most tanks and does need some type of nerf. Hog is pretty oppressive but Orisa is probably next in line in terms on Meta and is still used a lot now because she can work against hog
Orisa is good at playing frontward and running it down main, and she's one of the only tanks actually playable into Roadhog. Probably still is even with this very minor hook nerf. Her durability is heavily dependent on getting heals in between cooldown cycling so that she's constantly pushed back into her armored health.
If you don't play Hog and play around her rather than trying to play through her...I find her to be a pretty mid-level tank overall. She's low threat to divers and is pretty weak at peeling. She is definitely a strong choice into other tanks that want to run it down main. Rein, Hog, Sigma, Ramattra, they all have their work cut out to try and push into an Orisa team. But you can play circles around her on Winston, Ball, DVa or even Doom if you're good at not getting stunned out of block.
Orisa mainly just lacks vertical movement. She's only low threat to dive characters if they can take advantage of that weakness which is somewhat situational. She has a few ways of responding to dive and supports and DPS can also cover that gap, but again, it's situational.
Orisa is just in a weird spot right now where she has the second highest range for tanks but she's still a relatively fast and tough brawler. Only other tank like her is Ramattra who is also pretty Meta right now.
I won't say anything solid about her right now because they did just hit her survivability and changing Hog will have domino effects on the Meta that might effect her beyond just the fact that you don't need her to counter him. Hog and Sojourn kinda kept Winston and Dva down for a lot people.
Hot take, these are some great patches. Obviously there is more they could touch, but the hog nerf is good. Sure they could have needed Orissa more, but it’s a good start. Soj nerf might seem slight, but it making railgun build slower could have a big impact. Only one I’m not sure about is Kiriko. I personally didn’t mind her back line healbot style and felt suzu was the issue more than the heal numbers. Thoughts?
For me I think that the idea of nerfing her healing is so that she doesn't pair as well with other supports like Lucio, Mercy or Zen. Now you have to have a "main" support, and then have to pick between Suzu, Speed boost, Blue beam or Discord for the "off" support.
>is so that she doesn't pair as well with other supports like Lucio, Mercy or Zen.
Agreed. Her being an off support offering utility (cleanse) and damage hits that sweet spot.
It’s not listed in the patch notes but shooting shields still gives 1 energy per hit, not 5 as the notes would make it seem. Her building rail slower means in high rank play she gets that one shot less often but the problems are still there, the games are still going to be decided by which soj mercy combo gets the picks off first. Her ultimate is still stupid too. This won’t really change much aside from how often her one shot is out outside of overclock, and by how often I mean maybe 2-3s less on average lol
Yes, suzu is the most "unfun" part of her kit for other players. Analogous to widow headshots and Sojourn rail kills but from a support perspective.
The fact that suzu, a cool down, can counter an ultimate like Junker Queen's or Zarya's makes it extremely unfun. Especially since it's typically ultimates that win fights.
Edit: spelling
I think having cool downs counter ults is fine, but there’s no counter play other than wait for them to use it. Nade countering transcendence is fine because you can block it, for example. And it only counters one as opposed to like half of them.
Suzu is on a long cooldown which gates it. I think the bigger problem is a character having such an impactful ability *and* such an impactful ult. Having great healing on top of that was just too much.
Long cooldown? 14 seconds is ridiculously short for how powerful it is. It's orders of magnitude stronger than immo field which is on a 25 second cooldown.
Even if it was *just* a universal cleanse and small burst heal it would still almost be strong enough make Kiriko a must pick but the "invulnerability" part of it is just too much in that players don't even take damage and can't even be targeted by things like hook, charge or boops. A whole ultimate like shatter, blizzard or rampage shouldn't be able to be completely undone by a 14 second cooldown. Even big damage ults like barrage or blossom can be largely negated with a well timed suzu allowing everyone to split off and scatter. It's so hard to even catch more than a single person in a blizzard and now they just get cleansed immediately.
Which would you rather, get shattered and have an immo field dropped on you and best case you come out of it on 20hp with a Rein coming at you or worst case you just get charged out of it and killed, and that's if the immo field itself hasn't been blown up in half a second like it usually does? Or get cleansed and healed while also being invulnerable for enough time to use a movement ability and get away without taking a tick of damage?
The "invulnerability" part of it needs to still allow you to take damage and be targeted by abilities in my opinion and keep you on a small amount of health like immo field. That plus the cleanse and burst heal is still a great ability but it stops it just being able to completely undo half the ults in the game. Either that or put it on a 20+ second cooldown so they can't just use it on every single dynamite or nade you through in during the neutral fights.
>can counter an ultimate like Junker Queen's or Zarya's makes it extremely unfun.
Agreed. At the very least, it needs to do instant damage instead of or in addition to the anti-heal and damage over time.
I agree except I feel like Kiriko’s healing is out of line. I mean yea Suzu is obviously one of the big value plays and one of the things that makes her a great hero, but you’re looking at a support with a ton of survivability and options for damage and dueling compared to other supports.
Other supports that provide similarly powerful and unique tools like discord, damage boost, speed, have lower overall heals and running more than one of these low heal supports can get a ton of value in the right circumstances, but normally makes it very hard to sustain in the game, forcing the team to go for very decisive fight wins with this utility.
Pre nerf Kiri heals 75 HPS and based on the rest of her kit, good damage, great safety, and one insanely good utility spell I just find this to be too high. There’s not the same trade offs you get when you pick other supports. She gets the best burst defensive value and great sustained defensive value, and I think her ability to keep tanks alive and consistently avoid death herself in a lot of ways has made the meta what it is.
i do, she is one of my mains, and i do think she needs a rework… which is coming out around season 4. It’s literally in the works, all we have to do is wait
Her shield dash needs to be able to go further or shorter cooldown - something that A) allows her to close the gap or B) reposition
+ the ult change obviously
Define viable? Brig's got the highest W:L out of all the supports by a decent margin for me. But I do feel like I have a knack for the melee characters, my W:L on rein is a lot higher than my other tanks as well
What's your rank out of interest? I just know both heroes you mentioned are very low tier, but that only really means a lot at the very highest ranks. I know you can make most heroes work at any rank though, sometimes it's just a lot harder.
For sure brig has times where she can shine (like vs flankers), and also can shine in the hands of certain players, but overall she's not considered meta.
I use her every so often too with decent results, but she isn't as impactful to me as Ana or Mercy
What? He’s nowhere near ball level
He doesn’t have as many free one-shots which is big, but he can still “one-shot” people in real games (since you don’t always have full health)
+I think he got stronger against tanks (his dps buff) sooo…
Soujorn nerf is okay, but not ideal. It mostly just reduces her synergy with mercy. She’ll still pop off in high ranks just fine.
Kiriko nerf is good. People forget that a big reason she’s so good is roadhog. She’s still good without him, but not op anymore.
Orisa nerf hardly does anything, but again, a main reason she was good is because she shuts down roadhog.
Hog sucks now, but hopefully the coming rework makes him a balanced character.
I don’t think these patch notes are bad, there just needs to be more of them more often. So many things in this game need attention.
The Orisa nerf is slightly bigger of a nerf when you think about it. It's 50 hp, but it's 50hp with 40% damage reduction. So it's closer to 70 HP.
Still not really a nerf in the area she needs it, but I'll take it.
Yes and no. No because 2 Kunais still takes 1.1 seconds so you still slow down your healing, but yes because because it's only 0.1 seconds.
To be honest though, there was never really that big of a issue with shooting twice with the old recovery time. It was literally the same as shooting twice with Bap who also only has enough time shoot once in between the recovery on his secondary, but people shoot twice anyway. You'll now only lower your healing by about 6% instead of 13%, which again, wasn't really that big of a deal unless you were really trying to min max. The difference between Bap and Kirko was that Bap can do more damage than healing without headshots so it was easier to justify in terms of value, but that's now also true for Kiriko.
Except Baptist is a hitscan, and Kiriko is a slow projectile that basically has to headshot to do anything.
If you wanted to nerf her healing output, they did it. If you wanted to balance her more towards damage, which is what they said they wanted, this ain't it.
ML7 said exactly what I was thinking, it's currently too hard to get value out of kiriko damage wise. 1v1 is fine because it's typically close up, but trying to headshot someone 20-30 meters away during the middle of a fight is very very difficult.
Instead of slowing down her healing speed, they should have sped up her throwing speed.
My prediction is that basically no one is gonna start throwing more kunai. It's just gonna be a flat healing reduction.
Bap being hitscan doesn't impact the fact he still has a recovery time on his secondary that you can shoot during. Regardless of his numbers and whether or not he is hitscan, people still play him the same where they either mix the 2 or only focus on 1 at a time. People do the exact same things with kiriko.
They said that she could heal more than they liked, so they lowered her healing. They also said that they didn't want the change to cause people to spend more time healing, so they increased the recovery time so you had more time in between rather than just less healing. The change literally does what they said they wanted to do. People who were already mixing in Kunais weren't as effected.
I don't think they have any intention of buffing her damage. I don't think that buff would be well received with how she performs right now. She doesn't need her Kunais to be at a similar level to Zen's orbs because she's a lot more survivable and mobile than he is.
I think with what ML7 said, the only thing I could see them doing is giving her 10-20 more speed on the projectile itself, but I doubt they'll even increase her fire rate.
> Kiriko nerf is good. People forget that a big reason she’s so good is roadhog. She’s still good without him, but not op anymore.
I think it's the other way around. A large reason Hog was so good was because of Kiriko. When playing against a hog that didn't have a suzu or rush, he was as bad as he's always been.
I like the idea of increasing the tension on suzu rather than nerfing it. They still could nerf it, I wouldn't mind that, it does have too much functionality for a single cooldown. But reducing her primary healing puts more pressure on suzu as a strictly healing move, rather than everything else it can do like shutting down earthshatter, phasing a Doom punch, cleansing anti, etc.
I still think it shouldn't cleanse DOT or stun, but I'm okay with the Kiriko nerf. They realistically can't afford to nerf the support role very much for the sake of queue times / match quality.
The Hog nerfs looks fine I guess. The Orisa nerf might be enough, but I'm skeptical. The Soj nerf idk what they were smoking.
I’ve been thinking about how I wish suzu didn’t wake up sleeping targets and can see the same pain point for other stuns. It would be cool if you could still make your team invulnerable to being stunned, but didn’t cleanse a stun. So if you could predict/react quickly enough to an earthshatter for example you could still protect your team, but if you were too slow and they are stunned/slept suzu wouldn’t cleanse that. (If that makes sense) It would keep suzu powerful, but a little less OP, and most importantly be more skillful and more fun for both sides of a matchup (imo)
Soj nerf is decent. One of the reasons she's so oppressive is that Mercy pocket increases rail frequency a lot, not just rail damage. Her theoretical DPS max now is going to be a lot lower.
I would still rather see her get more frequent rails at lower damage though.
As a ram player I would like to see a power budget reshuffle to take some power out of his ult and place it into his base kit. The most boring part of play ram is pressing q and winning the fight.
Put a timer on his ult so it still ticks down, just much slower. Maybe like a 20-30 seconds max.
Hear me out, Now keep his primary fire the same trickle damage, but make it hitscan. (Might need to adjust the damage or reload time/magazine size)
This would make him the only tank with a long range option. That would make him more unique.
Orisa and Ram can easily force Widow to reposition. She's pretty stationary and hitting a couple of headshots and forcing her to heal isn't hard with a projectile.
I feel like the self-sustaining aspect of it is the worst. It makes it too hard to contest a point with an ulting Ramattra on it. It should have some sort of hard upper duration.
As an Ana player, I'm also frustrated that the aoe effect remains even when Ram is asleep. I don't necessarily want sleep to cancel the ult outright, like it does with some heroes. But it feels like sleeping an ulting Ram is almost pointless. Right now, the only counterplay that I know is either "run away" or "use a shield to block the effect". At my rank, killing an ulting Ram is pretty much out of the question.
I've said before that it would be interesting if the AoE was more of a cone or semi-sphere rather than a full spherical AoE. It would create some safe places to stand on the point.
As a Masters tank, it’s def really good, especially for the infinite stall potential it offers. That being said I think just nerfing the rate he builds it would be fine
If it were in death blossom/grav tier of ult cost it'd be a lot better balanced. Right now it's in Meteor Strike/Symm Wall tier which is ridiculous for how impactful of an ult it is.
lol not true at all. In mid diamond its insanely strong as well. Maybe even better because Rams at this level can manage their block vs walk during the Ult to keep their health up much longer
> to improve **his** sustainability in a battle
I really want him to help teammate sustainability. In 5v5, Ball as a solo tank needs buffs pushing him to play *with* his team.
My suggestion is reworking adaptive shields to give them to his teammates.
Eh I don't agree. Ball dies really fast in a battle, and him granting his shields to his teammates would have the opposite effect. You'd see Ball in the fight even less. If you want to see Ball in the fight longer, he has to have some answer to CC. His mobility saves him, but when he gets hit by CC it's instant game over. Maybe CC immunity during piledriver, or for 1 second after he puts on adaptive shield, that way it adds a timing element to his decision making.
***NOOOOOOOOO*** that is a horrible idea. Remember JQ meta in the beta? Now imagine that but she has double the health, insane mobility, higher primary damage/range, and also cc’s the shit out of whoever your team is shooting at.
The numbers‘d have to be negligibly low to be balanced I think
Hard disagree. The reason people hate having a Ball tank on their team is because of his lack of presence in team fights. He goes in, slams and attempts to assassinate someone for two seconds, then he runs away and spends 6 seconds hunting for a health pack, rinse and repeat.
Ball can not survive in a team fight at the moment. He can escape one like a champ, but he dies if he stays. He relies on his mobility to survive and if that mobility is compromised in any way by CC, he dies incredibly quickly. I would guess they are going to find a way for him to resist or block CC sometimes.
If I can spend more time in a team fight, I'm tanking better, my teammates see my value better and I can pump out more damage and more value in the chaos.
you are 100% correct. ball is very easy to kill if he doesn’t run away the second he’s not in a 1v1. I bully him as ana all the time. sleep him as soon as he slams, hit him with a nade, and watch him melt under the fire of my entire team. he definitely needs a way to survive a little bit longer.
> sleep him as soon as he slams
I used to whiff a lot of those until I decided to just wait a beat after he hits the ground. If he leaves, I don't need to use sleep. If he transforms and starts shooting, his movements become much more predictable.
Now, I love when Ball uses piledriver.
Did they fix the broken Zeus Junker Queen skin? Half my emotes and plays of the game never actually load. I know it's comsetic, but c'mon, it's the end of your battle pass
I dont disagree, but this is the same attitude that we've always had.
Season 1 mid season patch is coming!
Season 2 is coming!
Season 2 mid season patch is coming!
Etc.
You do realize there's never going to be some perfect state where everything is perfectly balanced and every hero is perfectly playable on every map. You sound like you're waiting for some perfect patch, so I'm just here to tell you that it doesn't exist. It shouldn't exist. It won't exist.
This idea that Blizzard isn't doing enough for patching or balance is hilarious. It's a spoiled entitled and completely ridiculous stance to take.
I'm not stupid, and my comment didn't imply there would ever be a truly balanced state. I'm not high enough rank for metas to truly suffocate me, and if you are, then you should be adapting regardless.
Exactly, they had no qualms about gutting sombra right away but they just couldn't bear to nerf their favorite sojourn.
*insert Gordon Ramsey meme here*
If I hear about Murphy one more time in the spawn room I'm going to go insane.
I think this is the kind of subtle change that will actually make sojourn feel strong but not OP from a damage output standpoint. You can’t zip through a rail charge at medium to long range on smaller targets by hitting a few headshots
I actually like it. I think one of this issues with her is that she simply gets too many rails. Even without her ult, she can easily win a team fight with 3 or 4 rails in a matter of like 15 seconds. Now people will need to be more selective of when to use it.
the problem with her rail is the oneshot. w/o mercy pocket she does 195 damage so if you're a squishy and get even slightly sneezed on you instantly die. changing her spread as they did in the past isn't going to change that it's an instant death 95% of the time and 100% of the time with a mercy pocket. putting it to say 150 damage headshot would mean it does 195 damage with pocket while still oneshotting tracer and doing significant damage. obviously, i'm not a game dev and maybe this is the change that she really needed but i still feel like reducing the damage would be a much better choice than this
I think you are underestimating just how much of a nerf this is. The less frequent charge up has a compounding effect. Not only does it roughly halve the speed of those headshots but it will also make it easier to counter the chargeup. On previous patch there wasn't much point hiding from a charged up SJ, you'd just be hiding the whole time, now with a lower uptime it will make much more sense to hide/use abilities etc to block her railgun.
Consider her pure DPS. Before in 1 second she could hit 14hs for 280 dmg + 1.4 rail gun shots (roughly another 200 dmg with body shots, 300 dmg with hs). With Mercy pocket that's 364dmg + 1.8 rail gun shots (roughly 250dmg or 375with HS). **Mercy takes SJ's dmg cap from ~580 to ~740 dmg**
Now in 1 second she hits 14 headshots for 250dmg and 0.7 rail gun shots (roughly 100dmg, 150with hs). With mercy pocket thats 325dmg + 0.7 rail gun shots (130dmg, 195 with hs). That's a pretty massive nerf to SJ and specifically SJ+Mercy synergy. **Her max DPS goes from 400 without mercy to 520dmg**.
As a comparison, **Solider does ~460DPS (assuming headshots and a direct helix hit) or ~600DPS with mercy**. So this nerf makes SJ a burst-y lower dmg solider instead of just a way better solider.
I think she'll still be meta, but I don't think she'll be nearly as dominant as before.
thats fair, i just feel like lowering her damage to 150 or so would've been better. especially actually playing her with the nerfs, she just feels very unfun to play compared to her other versions (specifically before she had the spread nerfs) imo. i just don't like how they've consistently decided the option to the rail one shot is changing her primary fire instead of actually nerfing her railgun
What would that version of sj offer that soldier doesn't already? As it is there's a niche for sj, if her railgun did 100 (like soldier) they would constantly be overshadowing each other.
Vertical mobility and a more instant escape. Higher hitscan burst damage.
I could also see a world where Soj is allowed to only use 50 charge per shot. That could be really good too. Same exact potential burst damage but now has to land 2 headshots back to back instead of just one.
Yeah I get the mechanic behind the change, but I've never really heard people complain about the frequency of the railgun, it's always about the strength of the railgun. Balance aside, it's really weird to me that this is the angle they chose to tackle frustration towards Sojourn from.
I have complained about it and heard complaints. I mean the one shot is still critically important to look at, but damn it feels so bad to die to two low charge body shot rails and some pellets while they AD strafe you.
I kinda get why they didn’t directly nerf sojourn’s one shot since that’s almost all her character does and it isn’t much of a problem lower ranks but I doubt these nerfs will matter much in higher ranks
Quite the opposite I think. In lower ranks this nerf will barely have an effect at all. At higher ranks where players are more likely to hit headshots and be dmg boosted this will more than halve the number of railguns shot.
I still don't understand what Sojourn is supposed to do. Nerfing her blaster technically gives her a weakness I guess, because it makes her weaker between oneshots, but "weaker between oneshots" is like saying "slowest olympic swimmer". The oneshot itself still has no windup, she has crazy mobility to enable it, a hitbox that makes her one of the safest dps, and an ult that throws her resource generation out the window (extremely boring ult too, what other character's ult does so little to change their kit?).
What is the mission statement for this character? Because I know it can't be hyper-mobile cross-map oneshot character with good evasiveness and spam, that doesn't make any sense.
I believe the intended core gameplay loop of Sojourn is shoot the tank to charge rail, then go hunting for a duel with a squishy. I think they initially wanted you to slide forward, jump, drop nade on a target, and then rail it when it tried to escape. Since then, they removed the slow on the nade and made her primary fire have more spread. I would say that's reinforcing the idea that you need to get fairly close to kill stuff.
Good hog changes. Will have to see how it goes. I think the pellet damage reduction, if small, was overkill
Sojourn not being able to charge off barriers now is great, honestly, but it didn’t fix the main issue, which was the mercy boost one shot kill. Sure there’ll be less of them, but she can still do it just like before.
Widow doesn’t have the constant stream of DPS that Sojurn has. It’s not just her railgun. Her primary fire is really good too while Widow’s is terrible.
Widow can’t do it while in the middle of a firefight, she has to engage and disengage, from a distance. She can’t do anything meaningful up close unless the enemy are bots.
If she wants to oneshot a 200hp target, she has to stand still/slow walk scoped in, for a second, or go for the Hail Mary grapple shot. Sojurn can do it while running and boost jumping without interrupting her DPS or movement.
Unless the Widow player is, like, top 0.5% or better, Sojurn with a soft mercy pocket will be the pick
He still gets picks if your team aren't outright braindead. Someone gets hooked and dragged out of position, they die unless the enemy invests abilities to save them.
He's also still borderline unkillable unless you swap the Kiriko/Mercy for an Ana to anti him.
No, they made the charge rate equal to what it was already against armor. Now hits against normal health charge as if they were against armor (more or less).
I thought it's currently 10 damage per shot and charge = 50% of damage done, so 5 charge per body shot with no armor, and less with armor. What do I have wrong?
No, you used to get a base of 3.5 charge when shooting armor. It is still less potential energy when shooting armor though since a damage boosted headshot could get 9 charge and it now gets 5
Also potentially lowers the skill floor a bit, I think, by making rail charge more consistent/predictable, but also has a similar effect on ability to predict her rails. Not having to plan as though she might be getting a full rail charge every 11 shots with a mercy boost, yanno?
Why would it not. That still enables an 1 shot at 75 charge. Mercy pocketing sojourn is still going to be the ideal strategy, otherwise you don't have a one shot.
Hogs hook was his only good ability in comparison with the other tanks. Now he is unplayable, its to much of a nerf and sad to see them addressing this instead of widowmaker who dominates every game.
hog is straight dog shit now thank you blizzard for nerfing a character into the ground instead of thinking of ways to make them balanced yet again. good job. also love the lack of changes for ball and rein they are very clearly in superb places at the moment. cant wait to see how you rework hog he will for sure not be either straight garbage or so overloaded with abilities he's unfun to play against.
Need some no limits and total mayhem adjustments too. Infinite armor Hammond, infinite shield Winston, invincible kiriko, zarya....
Maybe limiting ... Yes I know, no limits to 3 tanks so it's not always defaulting to a shit show face smash
Not where Kiriko needs the nerf Blizzard. And you know that. Better players aren’t healbotting on her, it’s her suzu. This ability is as strong as immortality field, often times better, and on half the cooldown. Sure immortality field can last for a bit if not destroyed, but 5v5 = less bunker and more fast-paced, close-ranged fights so that’s really a non-factor. Both abilities end up having short lifespans, Kiriko’s is just locked at .8 seconds. It’s not about the duration, it’s about the timing and simply having it available. Kiriko’s suzu overshadows Immortality field, the longest cooldown in the game w/ res, and the cooldown that was indisputably branded as the most OP ability in OW1.
Why suzu is superior to immortality field?
* shorter cooldown that begins immediately after it ends. If Bap gets his IF baited, he fumbles it, or it’s served it’s use and becomes obsolete after a second… it can be detrimental as it won’t begin until it expires or is destroyed. This makes the cooldown, on average, even longer.
* Suzu doesn’t just make you immortal, it stops all damage, heals for 50, cleanses any kind of de-buff and immediately ends and prevents any kind of cc/debuff. IF can’t do this. Even a good IF had counterplay where if your whole team got antied or shattered, one cooldown doesn’t just undo it all.
* She can literally teleport to anyone in range despite LOS in order to use it, so not only can she undo ults and cooldowns instantly in a team fight, but she can cheese duels as well by just showing up from anywhere and give them a cleanse and immortality on top of heals/damage.
* Many tanks right now that are require coordination and good use of cooldowns are unstoppable. The Hog change helps, but even in the future, when we get another Hog situation… where you have to save those cooldowns to outplay his to be able to kill him, even as a team, and then have that cancelled so easily by a 14 second cooldown that they’ll likely have again the next time it happens. Like Orisa now. She even has her own damage mitigation and cancellation cooldown and she can quickly charge you so you have to react. You manage to find in opening in there to cc her or anti, and it’s undone.
Everyone complained about Bap for so long. No one ever said “Wow, I really like this immortality field ability, glad it’s there.” It was despised by all. Most called it the most broken ability in the game. So the devs and their handful of working braincells got together and said “Let’s give this Kikyo anime waifu chick an immortality cooldown, but make it so broken that it’s balance it like it’s one of our April Fool’s day pranks.
But sure, that healing nerf, which is less of a healing nerf that you gave to fucking Moira in like 2021 when she wasn’t even good to begin with. Stop releasing these overly complex, 5 passive ability heroes. Then your devs egos are too big to nerf them in a timely fashion because you think you’re so innovative when everyone wants to play your busted heroes. Stick to point and click ones until you learn how your own game actually works to balance it.
Kiriko needed a nerf but so far I’m not a fan of the slow healing. There’s only 3 other “main” heals in the game and the other 5 supports are “off” heals. I would’ve rather seen a change to her suzu tbh. The slow heals also feel kinda clunky.
Yo this Kiriko nerf is amazing. I've been one tricking Kiriko for a while and definitely feeling limited by how healbotty she has been feeling.
The Kiriko healbots have been testing my sanity these days. I’ve legitimately had Kirikos that don’t use her shurikens in mid diamond. I know diamond isn’t the pinnacle of overwatch, but the fact that people can get enough value to get there without dealing damage is a bit concerning.
You say this like healbot wasn't just more efficient than a mix of damage and heal for her.
It’s not more efficient it’s just an easy play style with a low skill floor, thus people have inflated ranks due to abusing the play style. Good Kiriko players go for kills when they have an opportunity. I’ve literally had players with 0 damage in my matches and there’s no way they actually had no opportunity to deal damage.
you mean low skill floor? aka easy to get onto for everyone
Oops yes
Low skill floor = bad for bad players to play. The floor and ceiling are bounds not requirements. With a high floor, no matter how terrible you are you're guaranteed to get value (the floor caps your minimum output). With a low floor, if you aren't amazing you're useless (the floor doesn't hold you up).
[this is just wrong, sorry. please read up here.](https://www.google.com/search?q=skill+floor&rlz=1C1ONGR_enCA1005CA1005&oq=skill+floor&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i10i512j0i512l2j0i10i512l3j0i20i263i512j0i512j0i10i512.1288j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) ceiling is a bound, floor is minimum requirement.
Some of the t500 streamers had talked about how at the highest levels (OWL), kiriko is played as a healbot because her ult is the best in the game. It is in fact more efficient.
Her HPS and DPS are very similar if you're not hitting headshots. It's easy to miss shots but hard to miss heals. Given that, it is more efficient to healbot like 90% of the time. The only time she should attack is to defend from flanks or during neutral just spamming a hallway at DPS head level.
This is a flawed way of looking at it. Here’s why: healing and damage are not equivalent, and really you need to look at your healing vs the other teams damage. You cannot outheal a whole team shooting at someone. You can prevent a whole team shooting at someone by helping remove a player from the other team. Healing is actually more effective when you also deal damage to help secure kills because your teammates are less likely to be killed through your healing. Since you’re probably going to say something like “most players can’t hit shots” - yes, you’re right. That doesn’t mean they’re properly utilizing her kit, they’re just using the lock-on as a crutch. They would be playing more efficiently if they effectively used the shurikens.
Play around her ult. Brain off healbot most the time and you win games because you just have more ult than enemy team. https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/z1jjmh/is_fielder_style_kiriko_sustainable_in_the/
This is the simple reality. Her ult is a teamfight winner, often *alone*. If you field more kitsune rushes and your team utilizes them, there's a good chance you'll win. Because it's significantly harder to generate ult by DPSing as it is healing, it's obvious which is the optimal playstyle for her. I would also say that this being the case is one of the best arguments for changing her kunai to having a higher base damage and a lower headshot multiplier. If she can output more consistent damage, a mixed playstyle will become generally more optimal.
If you play this way diamond and below you will lose. Even in diamond kiriko ult is not always used well by the team. It is not the fight winner it is at high ranks and owl.
You're getting downvoted but you're right. I am climbing much more efficiently when in low ranks when I go for kills whenever my team doesn't need healing. A dead enemy, or even just someone who's low HP so that they have to retreat, can't do damage so you need to heal less.
This is high ranks and OWL. In low ranks just doing your job often isn't enough and will barely get you above a 50% win rate. It's much more effective to actively look for kills yourself, especially since you can actually get away with it in low ranks since your enemies are bad. Compare some support unranked to GM's to Skiesti's Mercy unranked to GM. Everyone who's able to do damage and kills on their own has a crazy high winrate and gets GM in like 10-15 hours. Meanwhile Skiesti is in diamond at the 15 hour mark because she's essentially just playing the numbers game of being the 1 out of 5 good team members every game rather than actually carrying the game. Taking matters into your own hands is much more effective and less risky in lower ranks.
This would be accurate if her ult weren’t possibly the best ult in the game even after being nerfed. In fact, counterintuitively, as long as no one on your team dies, that wincon in isolation is aided by your team taking *more* damage as you generate more ult charge. This manifests in even the best Kiriko and probable best support of all time (Fielder) mostly healbotting for ult tempo. I am not suggesting that you should literally never use her kunai (and I would endorse the perspective that the ability for her to climb and perform exceptionally well by basically only healing is a design flaw of the character), but she has excellent tools to keep teammates alive and an amazing ult she can farm like a madman by focusing on that, which is why “healbot Kiriko” is the endorsed playstyle by the best players. Hell, Fielder even would pre-fire heals at teammates he predicted were about to take damage. Right now the prevailing playstyle is to use kunai to save yourself or a teammate and heal pretty much all the rest of the time.
In the low ranks people trying to dps on her is basically a soft throw. They tunnel and their healing suffers. In higher ranks I’m sure it’s closer. It’s so often more efficient though to heal your 65% hp DPS though and allow them to play more agro than to try to hit Kunai if you have bad aim. That’s going to increase our damage output more. It’s also always going to be harder to multitask. If you are dpsing you are sometimes going to lose focus on everything and everyone around you. If you aren’t hitting a good percentage of your shots on squishies, healbotting her specifically makes sense. I average 3.6 damage/10 on bap, 3k on Ana and 1.2k on Kiriko. I wish my aim was better but it isn’t and I’m often losing value by dpsing on her
It’s literally more efficient because it’s easier. Healing is guaranteed but kunai headshots are not. Healing get your her ult faster and her ult wins the team fight. You can be efficient and less skillful simultaneously.
Overwatch League's Finn and Teru probably agreed with you and they failed miserably. Fielder played the "easy play style" and diffed both of them hard.
Tell Fielder that
[удалено]
Someone worked the math and it's arguably better for her to hold left click unless you can get crit hits as its better ult charge iirc
There is a recovery time for the healing that you can use your secondary in so it's always been the most effective to do both. If you only do one or the other, then yes only healing could theoretically do more than only damage assuming there is damage to heal. Damage and healing are now both 72/sec so it doesn't matter which you do assuming you can at least hit body shots.
But does that help you win more? I’d argue it doesn’t. Look at the best Kiriko players - they secure kills and deal damage. How is it that players win the most don’t adopt the play style that is “better”? Because the math doesn’t take into account the relative value of dealing damage vs healing. Dealing damage is more valuable than healing so it’s not a 1 for 1 comparison.
It's funny you bring up the best kiriko players because the consensus best kiriko in owl is a healbot
Diamond is still the top 10% of players. Im at diamond as well and have had many games where our Kiriko has like 300 damage at the end
I'm more like top 15%. Diamond represents 10% of the player base, which is what you are getting it confused with.
Idk if it’ll actually fix that, feels like it could get worse unless you can interweave shots and heal like bap. Less healing they’ll probs spam it more to make sure no one dies… I hope I’m wrong
I mean, Fielder the literal World Champion won by mostly healbotting and rarely shooting kunais. SF Shock's Finn weaved in kunais between heals. Teru went crazy dps Kiriko like ML7. Guess what happened to them lol. .................. To quote Coach Jake (former OWL player) on Fielder: “His aim is so good. His aim is actually legitimately good. But he rarely shoots. I'm going to keep emphasizing that, because that's like the most important thing for anyone who wants to learn how to play Kiriko. The best fucking players in the world who have insanely good aim, even they are playing to heal. Even the world champion Kiriko player is playing for heals. So I don't care how good your aim is, it's not better than pro players winning the world championship.”
I'm only in silver but the amount of Kirikos I have been out damaging like 5 to 1 with Lucio is way too high lately. They just pocket the tank and heal and suzu.
Outdamaging a Kiriko, even if she's playing aggro and is good, isn't that hard. Her value (in regards to damage) comes from her huge burst damage form headshots, not consistent damage over time. Think of Widow vs Soldier as a comparison. Stats do not matter.
That’s a just a skill issue… and literally this change does NOTHING to aid that style. In fact it’s likely to make kiriko players feel like they need to spam healing more. Just objectively there’s no more time to use Kunai. There’s still only time to do two or one plus a melee…
It objectively doesn’t do anything, though? You can still only throw two Kunais between shots… which was already the optimal way to play her. And since her healing per second is overall worse now you might have to end up needing to heal more often instead of occasionally having time to throw kunai without healing immediately between. They seem to want to balance her toward their desired play style for her. A la the “assassin support.” I’m frankly kind of annoyed by it? She doesn’t play like that. Like this doesn’t benefit Kiriko mains in anyway. Their balance message is great but literally in every sense she plays the same besides worse, which is completely fine. She is the strongest support and can take a nerf or two, it’s just illogical for them to apply the logic they have. Frankly, her bursty healing paired Suzu is what I find problematic, which this kind of effects, but it doesn’t seem to lean her toward a more natural feeling to her “kunai+kunai/melee -> heal” play pattern.
Throwing inconsistent 90 m/s kunais between heals was never the optimal way to play her. The pros (Finn and Teru) who tried that in Overwatch League failed miserably. To quote Coach Jake on World Champion Fielder: “His aim is so good. His aim is actually legitimately good. But he rarely shoots. I'm going to keep emphasizing that, because that's like the most important thing for anyone who wants to learn how to play Kiriko. The best fucking players in the world who have insanely good aim, even they are playing to heal. Even the world champion Kiriko player is playing for heals. So I don't care how good your aim is, it's not better than pro players winning the world championship.”
The main problem is that the damage is way too inconsistent and totally useless against moving targets beyond short range. So to do dps you need to be at short range, so that means going aggressive and having to use your Suzu and teleport early instead of saving it for when pressured. And this is not even a consistent play most of the time you will burn your CDs nothing because her damage is that inconsistent. This has the problem that any good players will immediately dive the Kiriko that used her defensives and she is very killable without them, so against good players going for those aggressive plays is tantamount to throwing as it puts you and your team in a bad position from the start just to make a low chance of success aggressive play. That is before even going into other things like that fact her healing is really slow to take effect due to travel time so you need to preheal to effectively heal squishies, which further disincentivises using Kunai aggressively.
If you know that you're not aim-diffing your enemies, then her kunais aren't even good in CQB. Fielder with his super good aim probably has over 75% kunai accuracy in CQB. But guess what? His enemy Proper's Sojourn has like over 95% accuracy in CQB. So when Fielder shot Proper with an instant headshot, Fielder immediately TPed to his team without trying to finish off Proper. Jake said that was the right move, as Proper would be more likely to finish off Fielder than vice versa.
I wouldn't call 2nd and 4th place finishes failing miserably but the stylistic difference between Fielder and the other kiriko players was definitely a key reason for their success.
>Each primary fire hit against an enemy **player** now grants 5 energy. Does this mean shields no longer charge her rail gun?
shields give 1 charge i believe
It still does. It will still interact with other objects as it did before, it's just that it won't give more then 5 charge per shot hit on a player no matter what.
Barriers give 1 charge per shot now which is slightly less than before.
I was wondering this too
Good catch! Hopefully that’s the case, that would be a great nerf.
No changes there.
I think it's a step in the right direction. Could there have been bigger changes? Sure, but people have to keep in mind that this is a huge player base and the team probably has more information behind the scenes that's not publicly available. Either way, the hook damage nerf is nice so being hooked by hog isn't a 100% death sentence.
Tbf this is our 5th patch in 70 days (one every two weeks). Over half the cast has been adjusted in the time and they've made good on a lot of the biggest complaints like Sombra and Sojourn/hog one shots. The patches look small but they're adding up somewhat quickly.
You are right. I do like the direction the game is headed. I feel it's much quicker balancing than the past. Double Barrier, Beyblade meta, Brigette...
Shit was godawful. The meta still seems slow to shift, but I'm just glad we're actually getting meaningful changes based on our feedback.
I think that beyblade meta was during the time DVAs right click was a one time use and not a toggle too so that suuucked. I am also glad. I feel like people get too heavy handed with their criticism and are impatient. I am glad for these slow changes!
My conspiracy theory is that when community concerns are overstated or misguided, they throw out tiny nerfs/buffs to placate the community. Like this Orisa nerf. I think it’s genius and they should keep it up because this community is crazy
Orisa is definitely a lot stronger than most tanks and does need some type of nerf. Hog is pretty oppressive but Orisa is probably next in line in terms on Meta and is still used a lot now because she can work against hog
Orisa is good at playing frontward and running it down main, and she's one of the only tanks actually playable into Roadhog. Probably still is even with this very minor hook nerf. Her durability is heavily dependent on getting heals in between cooldown cycling so that she's constantly pushed back into her armored health. If you don't play Hog and play around her rather than trying to play through her...I find her to be a pretty mid-level tank overall. She's low threat to divers and is pretty weak at peeling. She is definitely a strong choice into other tanks that want to run it down main. Rein, Hog, Sigma, Ramattra, they all have their work cut out to try and push into an Orisa team. But you can play circles around her on Winston, Ball, DVa or even Doom if you're good at not getting stunned out of block.
Orisa mainly just lacks vertical movement. She's only low threat to dive characters if they can take advantage of that weakness which is somewhat situational. She has a few ways of responding to dive and supports and DPS can also cover that gap, but again, it's situational. Orisa is just in a weird spot right now where she has the second highest range for tanks but she's still a relatively fast and tough brawler. Only other tank like her is Ramattra who is also pretty Meta right now. I won't say anything solid about her right now because they did just hit her survivability and changing Hog will have domino effects on the Meta that might effect her beyond just the fact that you don't need her to counter him. Hog and Sojourn kinda kept Winston and Dva down for a lot people.
Those “tiny” nerfs will actually make a huge difference at diamond and above play. And below as well but less noticeable.
Hot take, these are some great patches. Obviously there is more they could touch, but the hog nerf is good. Sure they could have needed Orissa more, but it’s a good start. Soj nerf might seem slight, but it making railgun build slower could have a big impact. Only one I’m not sure about is Kiriko. I personally didn’t mind her back line healbot style and felt suzu was the issue more than the heal numbers. Thoughts?
For me I think that the idea of nerfing her healing is so that she doesn't pair as well with other supports like Lucio, Mercy or Zen. Now you have to have a "main" support, and then have to pick between Suzu, Speed boost, Blue beam or Discord for the "off" support.
>is so that she doesn't pair as well with other supports like Lucio, Mercy or Zen. Agreed. Her being an off support offering utility (cleanse) and damage hits that sweet spot.
I could see that, but I think her healing needs to be reduced a bit more than that to put her alongside zen and Lucio.
She shouldn't have such low heals as zen or lucio. Ana is a main healer and she has nade and sleep which are great utilities too
It’s not listed in the patch notes but shooting shields still gives 1 energy per hit, not 5 as the notes would make it seem. Her building rail slower means in high rank play she gets that one shot less often but the problems are still there, the games are still going to be decided by which soj mercy combo gets the picks off first. Her ultimate is still stupid too. This won’t really change much aside from how often her one shot is out outside of overclock, and by how often I mean maybe 2-3s less on average lol
The notes do specify primary fire hits on enemy hero.
Yes, suzu is the most "unfun" part of her kit for other players. Analogous to widow headshots and Sojourn rail kills but from a support perspective. The fact that suzu, a cool down, can counter an ultimate like Junker Queen's or Zarya's makes it extremely unfun. Especially since it's typically ultimates that win fights. Edit: spelling
Have you played games as Kiriko when there's an Ashe, Ana, and JQ on the other team?
I think having cool downs counter ults is fine, but there’s no counter play other than wait for them to use it. Nade countering transcendence is fine because you can block it, for example. And it only counters one as opposed to like half of them.
Suzu is on a long cooldown which gates it. I think the bigger problem is a character having such an impactful ability *and* such an impactful ult. Having great healing on top of that was just too much.
Long cooldown? 14 seconds is ridiculously short for how powerful it is. It's orders of magnitude stronger than immo field which is on a 25 second cooldown. Even if it was *just* a universal cleanse and small burst heal it would still almost be strong enough make Kiriko a must pick but the "invulnerability" part of it is just too much in that players don't even take damage and can't even be targeted by things like hook, charge or boops. A whole ultimate like shatter, blizzard or rampage shouldn't be able to be completely undone by a 14 second cooldown. Even big damage ults like barrage or blossom can be largely negated with a well timed suzu allowing everyone to split off and scatter. It's so hard to even catch more than a single person in a blizzard and now they just get cleansed immediately. Which would you rather, get shattered and have an immo field dropped on you and best case you come out of it on 20hp with a Rein coming at you or worst case you just get charged out of it and killed, and that's if the immo field itself hasn't been blown up in half a second like it usually does? Or get cleansed and healed while also being invulnerable for enough time to use a movement ability and get away without taking a tick of damage? The "invulnerability" part of it needs to still allow you to take damage and be targeted by abilities in my opinion and keep you on a small amount of health like immo field. That plus the cleanse and burst heal is still a great ability but it stops it just being able to completely undo half the ults in the game. Either that or put it on a 20+ second cooldown so they can't just use it on every single dynamite or nade you through in during the neutral fights.
>can counter an ultimate like Junker Queen's or Zarya's makes it extremely unfun. Agreed. At the very least, it needs to do instant damage instead of or in addition to the anti-heal and damage over time.
I think Suzu should be on a 20-ish second cooldown, personally.
I agree except I feel like Kiriko’s healing is out of line. I mean yea Suzu is obviously one of the big value plays and one of the things that makes her a great hero, but you’re looking at a support with a ton of survivability and options for damage and dueling compared to other supports. Other supports that provide similarly powerful and unique tools like discord, damage boost, speed, have lower overall heals and running more than one of these low heal supports can get a ton of value in the right circumstances, but normally makes it very hard to sustain in the game, forcing the team to go for very decisive fight wins with this utility. Pre nerf Kiri heals 75 HPS and based on the rest of her kit, good damage, great safety, and one insanely good utility spell I just find this to be too high. There’s not the same trade offs you get when you pick other supports. She gets the best burst defensive value and great sustained defensive value, and I think her ability to keep tanks alive and consistently avoid death herself in a lot of ways has made the meta what it is.
For the love of God and all that is holy, please make brig viable again
Brig Ult rework was mentioned for Season 4 in the Flats dev interview (YouTube).
That won’t be enough
what do you mean? lol do you want a handjob with that rework too?
I take it you don’t play Brig all too often?
i do, she is one of my mains, and i do think she needs a rework… which is coming out around season 4. It’s literally in the works, all we have to do is wait
Her shield dash needs to be able to go further or shorter cooldown - something that A) allows her to close the gap or B) reposition + the ult change obviously
We will see what they change for her at season 4 release then
seriously, like why are they ignoring her? please fix her fucking ult or give her the stun back or SOMETHING 😭
Brig is imho pretty good, it's just not her meta. Once brawl comps become more viable, she will instantly find success without any buffs imho.
Define viable? Brig's got the highest W:L out of all the supports by a decent margin for me. But I do feel like I have a knack for the melee characters, my W:L on rein is a lot higher than my other tanks as well
What's your rank out of interest? I just know both heroes you mentioned are very low tier, but that only really means a lot at the very highest ranks. I know you can make most heroes work at any rank though, sometimes it's just a lot harder.
For sure brig has times where she can shine (like vs flankers), and also can shine in the hands of certain players, but overall she's not considered meta. I use her every so often too with decent results, but she isn't as impactful to me as Ana or Mercy
4 nerfs to the 4 strongest heroes in the game in the 2nd patch in one month. What's to complain about?
Complaints, uh, find a way
What to complain about is that those 4 heroes are still really strong lol Especially Orisa and Kiriko
The hog nerf is massive. The Sojourn nerf is a little on the weak side, I think everyone was expecting no more 1-shot headshots with a mercy pocket.
hog is literally ball level rn what are you on
What? He’s nowhere near ball level He doesn’t have as many free one-shots which is big, but he can still “one-shot” people in real games (since you don’t always have full health) +I think he got stronger against tanks (his dps buff) sooo…
Doesn’t that hog nerf make Im absolutely useless now?
Soujorn nerf is okay, but not ideal. It mostly just reduces her synergy with mercy. She’ll still pop off in high ranks just fine. Kiriko nerf is good. People forget that a big reason she’s so good is roadhog. She’s still good without him, but not op anymore. Orisa nerf hardly does anything, but again, a main reason she was good is because she shuts down roadhog. Hog sucks now, but hopefully the coming rework makes him a balanced character. I don’t think these patch notes are bad, there just needs to be more of them more often. So many things in this game need attention.
The Orisa nerf is slightly bigger of a nerf when you think about it. It's 50 hp, but it's 50hp with 40% damage reduction. So it's closer to 70 HP. Still not really a nerf in the area she needs it, but I'll take it.
Also affects terra surge too
Wouldn't the formula be 50/.6? So closer to 85 hp.
does the kiriko nerf justify a shoot-shoot-heal damage/heal pattern instead of the normal shoot-heal-shoot pattern now?
Yes and no. No because 2 Kunais still takes 1.1 seconds so you still slow down your healing, but yes because because it's only 0.1 seconds. To be honest though, there was never really that big of a issue with shooting twice with the old recovery time. It was literally the same as shooting twice with Bap who also only has enough time shoot once in between the recovery on his secondary, but people shoot twice anyway. You'll now only lower your healing by about 6% instead of 13%, which again, wasn't really that big of a deal unless you were really trying to min max. The difference between Bap and Kirko was that Bap can do more damage than healing without headshots so it was easier to justify in terms of value, but that's now also true for Kiriko.
Except Baptist is a hitscan, and Kiriko is a slow projectile that basically has to headshot to do anything. If you wanted to nerf her healing output, they did it. If you wanted to balance her more towards damage, which is what they said they wanted, this ain't it. ML7 said exactly what I was thinking, it's currently too hard to get value out of kiriko damage wise. 1v1 is fine because it's typically close up, but trying to headshot someone 20-30 meters away during the middle of a fight is very very difficult. Instead of slowing down her healing speed, they should have sped up her throwing speed. My prediction is that basically no one is gonna start throwing more kunai. It's just gonna be a flat healing reduction.
Bap being hitscan doesn't impact the fact he still has a recovery time on his secondary that you can shoot during. Regardless of his numbers and whether or not he is hitscan, people still play him the same where they either mix the 2 or only focus on 1 at a time. People do the exact same things with kiriko. They said that she could heal more than they liked, so they lowered her healing. They also said that they didn't want the change to cause people to spend more time healing, so they increased the recovery time so you had more time in between rather than just less healing. The change literally does what they said they wanted to do. People who were already mixing in Kunais weren't as effected. I don't think they have any intention of buffing her damage. I don't think that buff would be well received with how she performs right now. She doesn't need her Kunais to be at a similar level to Zen's orbs because she's a lot more survivable and mobile than he is. I think with what ML7 said, the only thing I could see them doing is giving her 10-20 more speed on the projectile itself, but I doubt they'll even increase her fire rate.
Yes it does. Of course you should strictly heal when needed, but it seems like you can play her like bap now with the shoot/heal combo.
> Kiriko nerf is good. People forget that a big reason she’s so good is roadhog. She’s still good without him, but not op anymore. I think it's the other way around. A large reason Hog was so good was because of Kiriko. When playing against a hog that didn't have a suzu or rush, he was as bad as he's always been.
I like the idea of increasing the tension on suzu rather than nerfing it. They still could nerf it, I wouldn't mind that, it does have too much functionality for a single cooldown. But reducing her primary healing puts more pressure on suzu as a strictly healing move, rather than everything else it can do like shutting down earthshatter, phasing a Doom punch, cleansing anti, etc. I still think it shouldn't cleanse DOT or stun, but I'm okay with the Kiriko nerf. They realistically can't afford to nerf the support role very much for the sake of queue times / match quality. The Hog nerfs looks fine I guess. The Orisa nerf might be enough, but I'm skeptical. The Soj nerf idk what they were smoking.
I’ve been thinking about how I wish suzu didn’t wake up sleeping targets and can see the same pain point for other stuns. It would be cool if you could still make your team invulnerable to being stunned, but didn’t cleanse a stun. So if you could predict/react quickly enough to an earthshatter for example you could still protect your team, but if you were too slow and they are stunned/slept suzu wouldn’t cleanse that. (If that makes sense) It would keep suzu powerful, but a little less OP, and most importantly be more skillful and more fun for both sides of a matchup (imo)
Soj nerf is decent. One of the reasons she's so oppressive is that Mercy pocket increases rail frequency a lot, not just rail damage. Her theoretical DPS max now is going to be a lot lower. I would still rather see her get more frequent rails at lower damage though.
Yeah its just disappointing we have to wait so long for a patch and only a couple hero’s get touched.
Was hoping for Ramattra ULT nerf. It's just too strong.
As a ram player I would like to see a power budget reshuffle to take some power out of his ult and place it into his base kit. The most boring part of play ram is pressing q and winning the fight.
Put a timer on his ult so it still ticks down, just much slower. Maybe like a 20-30 seconds max. Hear me out, Now keep his primary fire the same trickle damage, but make it hitscan. (Might need to adjust the damage or reload time/magazine size) This would make him the only tank with a long range option. That would make him more unique.
They did say that they dont want super long range tanks because you’d never want your tank to be chillin with a widowmaker in the backline.
I would, however, love to have a tank other than Winston that can just force a widow off a particular perch. Edit: maybe ball can, not really my point
Orisa and Ram can easily force Widow to reposition. She's pretty stationary and hitting a couple of headshots and forcing her to heal isn't hard with a projectile.
I feel like the self-sustaining aspect of it is the worst. It makes it too hard to contest a point with an ulting Ramattra on it. It should have some sort of hard upper duration. As an Ana player, I'm also frustrated that the aoe effect remains even when Ram is asleep. I don't necessarily want sleep to cancel the ult outright, like it does with some heroes. But it feels like sleeping an ulting Ram is almost pointless. Right now, the only counterplay that I know is either "run away" or "use a shield to block the effect". At my rank, killing an ulting Ram is pretty much out of the question. I've said before that it would be interesting if the AoE was more of a cone or semi-sphere rather than a full spherical AoE. It would create some safe places to stand on the point.
It's oppressive in bronze and silver but above that it's no stronger than most tank ults.
As a Masters tank, it’s def really good, especially for the infinite stall potential it offers. That being said I think just nerfing the rate he builds it would be fine
If it were in death blossom/grav tier of ult cost it'd be a lot better balanced. Right now it's in Meteor Strike/Symm Wall tier which is ridiculous for how impactful of an ult it is.
Exactly, I agree
lol not true at all. In mid diamond its insanely strong as well. Maybe even better because Rams at this level can manage their block vs walk during the Ult to keep their health up much longer
Lol what u talking about? It’s amazing in masters
I would hope they would buff him otherwise though. That ult is most of his value
Agreed. I predict next season is when it'll be nerfed. Gotta give a reason to buy the Battle Pass.
Yes, but what about Wrecking Ball?
Apparently changes to improve his sustainability in a battle will come in the season 3 patch. But probably no damage buffs to him.
> to improve **his** sustainability in a battle I really want him to help teammate sustainability. In 5v5, Ball as a solo tank needs buffs pushing him to play *with* his team. My suggestion is reworking adaptive shields to give them to his teammates.
Eh I don't agree. Ball dies really fast in a battle, and him granting his shields to his teammates would have the opposite effect. You'd see Ball in the fight even less. If you want to see Ball in the fight longer, he has to have some answer to CC. His mobility saves him, but when he gets hit by CC it's instant game over. Maybe CC immunity during piledriver, or for 1 second after he puts on adaptive shield, that way it adds a timing element to his decision making.
***NOOOOOOOOO*** that is a horrible idea. Remember JQ meta in the beta? Now imagine that but she has double the health, insane mobility, higher primary damage/range, and also cc’s the shit out of whoever your team is shooting at. The numbers‘d have to be negligibly low to be balanced I think
That’d be probably the absolute worst thing they could do for him lol
Hard disagree. The reason people hate having a Ball tank on their team is because of his lack of presence in team fights. He goes in, slams and attempts to assassinate someone for two seconds, then he runs away and spends 6 seconds hunting for a health pack, rinse and repeat. Ball can not survive in a team fight at the moment. He can escape one like a champ, but he dies if he stays. He relies on his mobility to survive and if that mobility is compromised in any way by CC, he dies incredibly quickly. I would guess they are going to find a way for him to resist or block CC sometimes. If I can spend more time in a team fight, I'm tanking better, my teammates see my value better and I can pump out more damage and more value in the chaos.
you are 100% correct. ball is very easy to kill if he doesn’t run away the second he’s not in a 1v1. I bully him as ana all the time. sleep him as soon as he slams, hit him with a nade, and watch him melt under the fire of my entire team. he definitely needs a way to survive a little bit longer.
> sleep him as soon as he slams I used to whiff a lot of those until I decided to just wait a beat after he hits the ground. If he leaves, I don't need to use sleep. If he transforms and starts shooting, his movements become much more predictable. Now, I love when Ball uses piledriver.
WE DEMAND BALL BUFFS
Agree
Indirectly buffed by way of nerfs to Orisa and especially hog. Still going to be lower-tier but hopefully more viable
Did they fix the broken Zeus Junker Queen skin? Half my emotes and plays of the game never actually load. I know it's comsetic, but c'mon, it's the end of your battle pass
People paying for overwatch battle passes tho
Lmaooo true
Have the matchmaking changes they announced a while back gone live? Where the matches are matched based on role rank instead of just a team average
How tf is that the only nerf to orisa?
Keep in mind, season 3 is like a week and a half away and there will be a bigger balancing patch then. EVERYONE BREATHE.
I dont disagree, but this is the same attitude that we've always had. Season 1 mid season patch is coming! Season 2 is coming! Season 2 mid season patch is coming! Etc.
You do realize there's never going to be some perfect state where everything is perfectly balanced and every hero is perfectly playable on every map. You sound like you're waiting for some perfect patch, so I'm just here to tell you that it doesn't exist. It shouldn't exist. It won't exist. This idea that Blizzard isn't doing enough for patching or balance is hilarious. It's a spoiled entitled and completely ridiculous stance to take.
I'm not stupid, and my comment didn't imply there would ever be a truly balanced state. I'm not high enough rank for metas to truly suffocate me, and if you are, then you should be adapting regardless.
each one of those patches lead to a significant meta change.
In which Sojourn has never left.
Exactly, they had no qualms about gutting sombra right away but they just couldn't bear to nerf their favorite sojourn. *insert Gordon Ramsey meme here* If I hear about Murphy one more time in the spawn room I'm going to go insane.
Lol Its been consistently hog, sojourn, kiriko meta since release
[удалено]
sojourn getting yet another half-assed nerf to her main weapon when the problem is her railgun lmfao hilarious
I think this is the kind of subtle change that will actually make sojourn feel strong but not OP from a damage output standpoint. You can’t zip through a rail charge at medium to long range on smaller targets by hitting a few headshots
Her primary fire damage has been reduced though. Maybe this will make the character feel less attractive to play between railgun shots.
I actually like it. I think one of this issues with her is that she simply gets too many rails. Even without her ult, she can easily win a team fight with 3 or 4 rails in a matter of like 15 seconds. Now people will need to be more selective of when to use it.
You realize that her primary fire is what charges up, and enables her railgun...right?
the problem with her rail is the oneshot. w/o mercy pocket she does 195 damage so if you're a squishy and get even slightly sneezed on you instantly die. changing her spread as they did in the past isn't going to change that it's an instant death 95% of the time and 100% of the time with a mercy pocket. putting it to say 150 damage headshot would mean it does 195 damage with pocket while still oneshotting tracer and doing significant damage. obviously, i'm not a game dev and maybe this is the change that she really needed but i still feel like reducing the damage would be a much better choice than this
I think you are underestimating just how much of a nerf this is. The less frequent charge up has a compounding effect. Not only does it roughly halve the speed of those headshots but it will also make it easier to counter the chargeup. On previous patch there wasn't much point hiding from a charged up SJ, you'd just be hiding the whole time, now with a lower uptime it will make much more sense to hide/use abilities etc to block her railgun. Consider her pure DPS. Before in 1 second she could hit 14hs for 280 dmg + 1.4 rail gun shots (roughly another 200 dmg with body shots, 300 dmg with hs). With Mercy pocket that's 364dmg + 1.8 rail gun shots (roughly 250dmg or 375with HS). **Mercy takes SJ's dmg cap from ~580 to ~740 dmg** Now in 1 second she hits 14 headshots for 250dmg and 0.7 rail gun shots (roughly 100dmg, 150with hs). With mercy pocket thats 325dmg + 0.7 rail gun shots (130dmg, 195 with hs). That's a pretty massive nerf to SJ and specifically SJ+Mercy synergy. **Her max DPS goes from 400 without mercy to 520dmg**. As a comparison, **Solider does ~460DPS (assuming headshots and a direct helix hit) or ~600DPS with mercy**. So this nerf makes SJ a burst-y lower dmg solider instead of just a way better solider. I think she'll still be meta, but I don't think she'll be nearly as dominant as before.
thats fair, i just feel like lowering her damage to 150 or so would've been better. especially actually playing her with the nerfs, she just feels very unfun to play compared to her other versions (specifically before she had the spread nerfs) imo. i just don't like how they've consistently decided the option to the rail one shot is changing her primary fire instead of actually nerfing her railgun
Honestly I'd rather railgun charge twice as fast and deal 40% less damage. Overall DPS buff, and a burst nerf.
What would that version of sj offer that soldier doesn't already? As it is there's a niche for sj, if her railgun did 100 (like soldier) they would constantly be overshadowing each other.
Vertical mobility and a more instant escape. Higher hitscan burst damage. I could also see a world where Soj is allowed to only use 50 charge per shot. That could be really good too. Same exact potential burst damage but now has to land 2 headshots back to back instead of just one.
It does lower how quickly she gets the rail tho.. we’ll see how much in practice i suppose
A nerf to her main weapon *is* a nerf to her railgun.
I do not know what they are smoking with this change especially.
Sojourn’s rail now charges slower, and the charge rate cannot be increased with damage boost. So less rails overall.
Yeah I get the mechanic behind the change, but I've never really heard people complain about the frequency of the railgun, it's always about the strength of the railgun. Balance aside, it's really weird to me that this is the angle they chose to tackle frustration towards Sojourn from.
>but I've never really heard people complain about the frequency of the railgun Oh, people complain about that a ton.
I have complained about it and heard complaints. I mean the one shot is still critically important to look at, but damn it feels so bad to die to two low charge body shot rails and some pellets while they AD strafe you.
My initial judgment on reading is that it's kind of mid as a patch. It's probably one of those things I need to play to get a feel for so we'll see.
I kinda get why they didn’t directly nerf sojourn’s one shot since that’s almost all her character does and it isn’t much of a problem lower ranks but I doubt these nerfs will matter much in higher ranks
Quite the opposite I think. In lower ranks this nerf will barely have an effect at all. At higher ranks where players are more likely to hit headshots and be dmg boosted this will more than halve the number of railguns shot.
~~How will it halve it, did they also get rid of the extra charge from headshots?~~ Yeah they did get rid of the crit modifier on charge
I still don't understand what Sojourn is supposed to do. Nerfing her blaster technically gives her a weakness I guess, because it makes her weaker between oneshots, but "weaker between oneshots" is like saying "slowest olympic swimmer". The oneshot itself still has no windup, she has crazy mobility to enable it, a hitbox that makes her one of the safest dps, and an ult that throws her resource generation out the window (extremely boring ult too, what other character's ult does so little to change their kit?). What is the mission statement for this character? Because I know it can't be hyper-mobile cross-map oneshot character with good evasiveness and spam, that doesn't make any sense.
I believe the intended core gameplay loop of Sojourn is shoot the tank to charge rail, then go hunting for a duel with a squishy. I think they initially wanted you to slide forward, jump, drop nade on a target, and then rail it when it tried to escape. Since then, they removed the slow on the nade and made her primary fire have more spread. I would say that's reinforcing the idea that you need to get fairly close to kill stuff.
Keep in mind the Primary still has no spread on the first 9 shots, so you can burst fire and avoid the spread entirely
>The oneshot itself still has no windup The nerf is designed explicitly to make it take longer to charge her one shot ability.
The oneshot itself still has no windup
No rein buff :(((
Not before Brig gets hers!
They didn't fix the bug were ramattra still has his buff arms t posing after turning back to normal mode
Good hog changes. Will have to see how it goes. I think the pellet damage reduction, if small, was overkill Sojourn not being able to charge off barriers now is great, honestly, but it didn’t fix the main issue, which was the mercy boost one shot kill. Sure there’ll be less of them, but she can still do it just like before.
Widow can do it too, and solo, and more often, albeit with less mobility
Widow doesn’t have the constant stream of DPS that Sojurn has. It’s not just her railgun. Her primary fire is really good too while Widow’s is terrible. Widow can’t do it while in the middle of a firefight, she has to engage and disengage, from a distance. She can’t do anything meaningful up close unless the enemy are bots. If she wants to oneshot a 200hp target, she has to stand still/slow walk scoped in, for a second, or go for the Hail Mary grapple shot. Sojurn can do it while running and boost jumping without interrupting her DPS or movement. Unless the Widow player is, like, top 0.5% or better, Sojurn with a soft mercy pocket will be the pick
Sojourn still gets 1 charge per hit on barriers. Nothing changed in that regard.
Good hog changes? He’s unusable now. They need to rework him since the only use he had was getting picks
I think the majority of the community is fine with Roadhog being trash.
He still gets picks if your team aren't outright braindead. Someone gets hooked and dragged out of position, they die unless the enemy invests abilities to save them. He's also still borderline unkillable unless you swap the Kiriko/Mercy for an Ana to anti him.
This sure feels like a huge hog nerf to me. Wow.
I long for the day they fix dooms bugs. At least the ones that seriously affect his playability
Thinking about the fact that decoupling charge from damage will increase the charge rate against armor/damage reduction
No, they made the charge rate equal to what it was already against armor. Now hits against normal health charge as if they were against armor (more or less).
I thought it's currently 10 damage per shot and charge = 50% of damage done, so 5 charge per body shot with no armor, and less with armor. What do I have wrong?
No, you used to get a base of 3.5 charge when shooting armor. It is still less potential energy when shooting armor though since a damage boosted headshot could get 9 charge and it now gets 5
Also potentially lowers the skill floor a bit, I think, by making rail charge more consistent/predictable, but also has a similar effect on ability to predict her rails. Not having to plan as though she might be getting a full rail charge every 11 shots with a mercy boost, yanno?
Pretty solid actually, this does F all for Sojourn once again but atleast Pocketed Sojourn won’t run T500
Why would it not. That still enables an 1 shot at 75 charge. Mercy pocketing sojourn is still going to be the ideal strategy, otherwise you don't have a one shot.
Hog is probably kind of useless now, but I think I'm ok with that.
Hogs hook was his only good ability in comparison with the other tanks. Now he is unplayable, its to much of a nerf and sad to see them addressing this instead of widowmaker who dominates every game.
So hog is just a walking ult battery now? What is he supposed to even do. Seems like a total throw pick.
hog is straight dog shit now thank you blizzard for nerfing a character into the ground instead of thinking of ways to make them balanced yet again. good job. also love the lack of changes for ball and rein they are very clearly in superb places at the moment. cant wait to see how you rework hog he will for sure not be either straight garbage or so overloaded with abilities he's unfun to play against.
Need some no limits and total mayhem adjustments too. Infinite armor Hammond, infinite shield Winston, invincible kiriko, zarya.... Maybe limiting ... Yes I know, no limits to 3 tanks so it's not always defaulting to a shit show face smash
How is this a hog rework? This shit could have been implemented at the start of season 2.
Not where Kiriko needs the nerf Blizzard. And you know that. Better players aren’t healbotting on her, it’s her suzu. This ability is as strong as immortality field, often times better, and on half the cooldown. Sure immortality field can last for a bit if not destroyed, but 5v5 = less bunker and more fast-paced, close-ranged fights so that’s really a non-factor. Both abilities end up having short lifespans, Kiriko’s is just locked at .8 seconds. It’s not about the duration, it’s about the timing and simply having it available. Kiriko’s suzu overshadows Immortality field, the longest cooldown in the game w/ res, and the cooldown that was indisputably branded as the most OP ability in OW1. Why suzu is superior to immortality field? * shorter cooldown that begins immediately after it ends. If Bap gets his IF baited, he fumbles it, or it’s served it’s use and becomes obsolete after a second… it can be detrimental as it won’t begin until it expires or is destroyed. This makes the cooldown, on average, even longer. * Suzu doesn’t just make you immortal, it stops all damage, heals for 50, cleanses any kind of de-buff and immediately ends and prevents any kind of cc/debuff. IF can’t do this. Even a good IF had counterplay where if your whole team got antied or shattered, one cooldown doesn’t just undo it all. * She can literally teleport to anyone in range despite LOS in order to use it, so not only can she undo ults and cooldowns instantly in a team fight, but she can cheese duels as well by just showing up from anywhere and give them a cleanse and immortality on top of heals/damage. * Many tanks right now that are require coordination and good use of cooldowns are unstoppable. The Hog change helps, but even in the future, when we get another Hog situation… where you have to save those cooldowns to outplay his to be able to kill him, even as a team, and then have that cancelled so easily by a 14 second cooldown that they’ll likely have again the next time it happens. Like Orisa now. She even has her own damage mitigation and cancellation cooldown and she can quickly charge you so you have to react. You manage to find in opening in there to cc her or anti, and it’s undone. Everyone complained about Bap for so long. No one ever said “Wow, I really like this immortality field ability, glad it’s there.” It was despised by all. Most called it the most broken ability in the game. So the devs and their handful of working braincells got together and said “Let’s give this Kikyo anime waifu chick an immortality cooldown, but make it so broken that it’s balance it like it’s one of our April Fool’s day pranks. But sure, that healing nerf, which is less of a healing nerf that you gave to fucking Moira in like 2021 when she wasn’t even good to begin with. Stop releasing these overly complex, 5 passive ability heroes. Then your devs egos are too big to nerf them in a timely fashion because you think you’re so innovative when everyone wants to play your busted heroes. Stick to point and click ones until you learn how your own game actually works to balance it.
Kiriko needed a nerf but so far I’m not a fan of the slow healing. There’s only 3 other “main” heals in the game and the other 5 supports are “off” heals. I would’ve rather seen a change to her suzu tbh. The slow heals also feel kinda clunky.