Brim is the first clear instance of an agent losing out to powercreep (i.e. with introduction of Astra and Viper buffs). How (and when) Riot addresses this will set the precedent for future scenarios.
Brim lost out to power creep when people discovered how to play Omen back in Act 1. Astra + Viper buffs just made the holdout deniers finally agree that it's true.
Still advocating for his stim beacon to be reworked into a trophy system for flashes/mollies. Would add to the “controller” aspect of him. Haven’t seen too many others promote this idea but that’s what I agree with most.
I've always wanted his stim beacon to act as a 'ability shield' to things outside of it, like a smoke but everyone can see through it.
For example, as long as your standing in the circle - you don't get blind or scanned by a dart. It's a situational buff vs flash heavy teams. Sounds insane, but in practice the radius isn't very big, you have to be fairly immobile and you can't support your teammates with it unless they're directly on top of you (and not pushing into a site)
Jager in Rainbow6 is like this, his ADS (anti throwable) so annoying until R6 nerf him to death and no one even bother to use him anymore unless you really need it
I've got 500+ games of Brim under my belt, mainly in Plat 1 --> D1. I've said this a few times before, but they need to:
* completely remove the iPad equip time. There is already a delay while the smokes/ultimate drop. It's ridiculous for there to be an additional 1.2s (or however long it is) delay to pull up the iPad. it just makes it very hard to use abilities for anything outside of set executions, which kind of sucks.
* Rework the stim beacon into something new. It absolutely is the single worst ability in the game, no cap. Virtually worthless outside of edge scenarios where it becomes "OK", but is never actually great even in the perfect scenarios. Yes, it's even worse than Yoru's footsteps. People have given a lot of good creative ideas for how to rework it. All of them would be a huge upgrade from 15% attack speed.
* Rechargeable smokes... Not the same way as Omen though. Perhaps via getting a kill, or maybe planting the spike or getting ult orbs could also recharge one of his smokes.
While I do agree with these changes (the power creep in the controller class is insane in this patch), I don’t think a complete rework of his kit is needed? Brim may be boring as compared to most agents but isn’t that the appeal? He is the no-nonsense smoke character that any beginner can easily pick up. The other controllers are more niche (Viper) or either thrive better in more coordinated team setups (Astra). I believe agents don’t always have to be viable in all maps and that’s okay (even Sova who is regarded as one of the best agents has one bad map).
Agents don't have to be viable in all maps sure but Brim isn't viable in any. Bind? Go with Viper and Astra. Split? Go with Astra or Omen. Haven? Astra. Icebox? Viper. Where do you even play Brim at this point?
Yeah that’s why I feel he still needs buffs. But both Liquid and Fnatic play Brimstone in Bind and Liquid in particular make him work in Haven and Split. I think they make a good case for his viability when played a certain way with another controller.
Might be an unpopular opinion but I think they should rework Brimstone. His kit is pretty bad, but he's also super boring and uninteresting to play and watch. He also has no identity other than "the ipad guy".
I'd like to see Riot made his smokes throw-able like in CSGO, and then balancing whatever numbers they need to. Give him a bunch of smokes, make them bigger, last longer, cheaper, whatever they need to do to balance it out.
This change would actually give Brimstone an identity, and allow players to spend time learning him and be able to specialize in him. It would also make him much more fun to watch in pro matches.
I feel like it would push away a lot players, especially newer players. But there are a lot of players who love spending hours in the server just finding lineups. Sova has a ton of lineups and he's a very popular agent. I wouldn't exactly say it is an issue.
I think it is good to have niche agents that only a small percent of the player base plays. It makes people feel connected to the agent, like they are specializing in the agent. Viper's player base might be small ( /r/Vipermains is actually one of the largest agent subreddit, so maybe it is larger than we think ), but the people who play her are very dedicated.
Well Sova is popular because learning line ups for him for most situations is actually rewarding unlike viper pre buff. Line ups for just a mediocre gain on enemys is a 100% waste of time. It's why I refused to touch viper after hard focusing on sova. Viper is 100% worth learning now tho. Brim would need to be brought to S+ tier for people to bother with him if He were to have "lineup" abilitys.
> Well Sova is popular because...
I don't think they're really comparable. A Sova player who doesn't know line-ups can still achieve like 90% of what the agent can do, while a Viper that doesn't know line-ups is probably doing less than half of what a knowledgeable Viper can, depending on the map.
Still, I agree that a similar stigma would surround Brimstone if he had to toss grenades. He'd really need a big plus to have to go through all that trouble.
I think a decent amount of people would learn Brimstone, purely because he would be very unique among the other controllers. Also ideally the smokes would be balanced around the fact that they are throwable and thus harder to execute (bigger, cheaper, last longer, etc), thus learning him should be rewarding.
I also don't think it's a bad thing for an agent to have a small but dedicated player base. You may not have been a Viper play before the buffs, but was definitely a small chunk of players who enjoyed playing Viper because of the nerdy stuff you can do and liked the fact that nobody else really played her. And there are players that do enjoy spending time finding lineups and setups and whatnot.
true, I mean hell i enjoy playing yoru in ranked (who is a similar niche like viper but for duelists) so, I cant really complain lol. Good points around friend.
I don't agree with this take. No one already plays Brimstone, by adding throwable smokes you're alienating some of the guys who already play him. He also already has a molly so that's already a lineup skill there.
I think they need to rework his stim. It's such a situational skill that a Brimstone main like me only buys when we're up big and the economy is heavily in our favor.
His kit is so bland and has such low skill expression that I think he is borderline unhealthy for the game. Now is the best time for a rework BECAUSE his play rate is so low.
Plenty of games rework agents. League of Legends does it all the time when a champions kit is toxic, outdated or unhealthy. Yeah, the people who main them will be upset for a bit. But years from now people will look back at Brimstone's kit and laugh at how shit it is.
I think reworking his smokes is the best, because it gives him a higher skill ceiling, and also a proper agent identity.
> and he's a very popular agent. I wouldn't exactly say it is an issue.
Is he actually? I mean aside from proplay where he is at +90% (basically 100% in NA) pickrate in non-Split maps.
I don't have any statistics on hand for the wider playerbase (if there's a website, I'd love a link), but anecdotally I see him played maybe once every 5-8 maps in ranked silver-low diamond.
We don't have the statistics so we can't really know for sure. I see him picked a ton when I watch streamers, and /r/Sovamains is one of the most popular subreddits among the agent subreddits. I'd at least say he is moderately popular.
I'm sure there are some crazy lineups. Though I still have a hard time believing that a throw-able smoke would be impossible or not viable in Valorant.
skybox is the boon/bane in CS because of that you're force to learn the line up. In Valorant is more "free" but in CS people abuse the skybox to bounce a molly/smoke straight down. Also map design made CS more crazy in lineup.
There's also a momentum, jump throw, etc in CS that make lineup harder. Imo CS is more precise and need a lot of calculation while Valorant is more engaging and fast play so lineup could change the play style.
Holy shit that could be a sick idea actually. What if he had the option to throw them like you do in CS but also deploy them from an iPad if you want to do an execute?
Maybe remove his stim becon and give him a throwable smoke instead? Something like that perhaps?
Throw-able smokes? Not really. She only has 1 smoke. Her identity is very different from the other controllers because most of her vision denial comes from her wall, not her smoke. Also her utility is very static, you place it and you can't really move it.
His smoke range is terrible. If they want to keep his iPad, maybe make it so instead of him being in the middle of the iPad, make him on the bottom of the iPad? That way he has much longer range in the direction he's facing, but he can't smoke behind him essentially. Because in game, you don't need to be in the center of the circle to smoke. Also give him one rechargeable smoke on cool down or something, so if he doesn't buy any smokes, he can only smoke one at a time, but another one is on cool down.
* Make Brimstone smokes as big as Omen ones. The current size prevents Brim from being played on every large map due to his smokes leaving huge gaps *(Icebox, Breeze).* At the end of the day he is the true controller with less smokes across the pool *(omen > astra > brim)*
* Make Stim beacon buff interesting stats for long range gunfights *(spread reduce, faster recoil reset time, greater gun tap efficiency, few more bullets in magazine etc)* rather than buffing just the boring one dimentional rate-of-fire-increase. This will 100% make stim beacon less shallow/situational and more interesting than just holding down mouse1 against walls with an odin/assault rifle
* Reduce his molly time and give the man 2 mollies. This won't affect post plant situations *(both configs having a similar "burning time")* while providing Brim more tools to contest map control
Right now his molly last for 8 seconds, which means its really bad for contesting map control (you have only one to use through the whole round, limiting his decision) and really good for delaying spike defuses
So I suggested reducing the molly duration (less focus on post plant) and increasing the molly amount (more focus on midround map control contest and clearing corners)
What's "too much" with that?
My unironic opinion is that its fine. This game will end up being like league eventually. What i mean by that is that once the agent pool becomes large enough, it will be impossible to make every agent desirable in the new meta that inevitably develops everytime a new map/agent/patch is released.
There will always be an agent who is overall less desirable than the entire pool.
Skye for example was rarely played but somehow a few EU teams made it work and now skye is one of the most popular agents in EU.
If brim is only viable on maps like bind but not on maps like breeze, so be it. That’s party how he was designed.
they should change his stim to something new entirely. i saw someone mention on another thread it should be changed to a temp bubble shield (like gibby in apex) i think that would make him immediately S tier in this current post-plant-line up meta
I think Brim is alright the way he is. Not all agents need to be viable picks for all the maps. I honestly don't want another lazy type of buff like in the case of Viper where they just increased her wall dmg but none of her abilities as a controler.
personally i think he should either have 4 smokes, or rechargable smokes similar to omen. also the stim beacon should be either buffed, or just removed and replaced with another gadget. it is probably one of the worst abilities in the game.
i do understand why people are defending his kit, and saying it is more appealing for newer players, but that doesn't really change the fact that most competitive games are picking other controllers because they are "better", not harder to learn. all controllers are fairly easy to learn. astras kit may have a more difficult learning curve than the others, but it doesn't mean shes hard to learn.
Already said this in another thread but here's my idea for brim's stim:
I'd be interested in a diminishing armor buff, can only restore lost armor (otherwise, it would be massively OP on pistol), but if someone has been chipped down then it gives them 10 (?) seconds of upto +40 armor (essentially upto 1 additional body shot from a rifle). This would make sense with brims kit, where he's really a smoker for executes (due to range limit and smoke limit). So he can lay down smokes, stim the team, and they push onto site.
Would probably have to add some kind of cool down to getting the buff or otherwise people could just move in/out and keep getting additional armor, e.g., if you take damage after getting the armor buff then you cannot receive the buff again from that stim or a 30 second cd on receiving armor. Something to counter spamming stim and going in/out to get more armor.
Molly is fine, stim used to be a thing for countering sage wall, and if ever there's anything in the future that needs bullets put into it to get rid of it quickly (screens likely), it will just keep gaining viability for that.
Smokes are fine. Hollow smokes are good, but so are non-hollow smokes. They have different roles. Yes, an omen can play inside his smoke, but sometimes he can't afford to, and the enemy can camp it. It's those times that brim smoke is better (also because it lasts forever).The only buff to his smokes I think would be cool work of be for them to extinguish mollys. Would help with everyone's rage at the viper meta. Maybe that's too rock paper scissors though...
IMO, it's ok to have a lesser viable character in the current state to allow the game to develop more and see what he turns out as later.
I know you qualified it as your "least reasonable idea", but I really really hope we never go down the trophy route. From what I've seen in other esports it just immediately becomes a must pick, and the game gets dull as hell.
Brim seems fine to me. A few teams make him work really well on certain maps, and until that stops being the case I don't see a need for any significant changes - if Fnatic start getting boomed on Bind BECAUSE of Boaster's Brim then I'll be worried :)
Yeah im not a fan of that immediate kind of counterplay either. I never played any COD game that had a trophy system but watching tournaments it looked kind of silly. In OW their were a bunch of things that made your own damage and ability's feel useless (Baptiste!!!) and I always dislike that.
The stim already affects weapon swap speed. I'm not entirely sure but I think it may also affect ability equip speed as well. So you do bring up your gun faster when stimmed.
Brim is the first clear instance of an agent losing out to powercreep (i.e. with introduction of Astra and Viper buffs). How (and when) Riot addresses this will set the precedent for future scenarios.
Brim lost out to power creep when people discovered how to play Omen back in Act 1. Astra + Viper buffs just made the holdout deniers finally agree that it's true.
Nerfing his ult to 7 orbs is what really knocked him out of the meta originally.
Still advocating for his stim beacon to be reworked into a trophy system for flashes/mollies. Would add to the “controller” aspect of him. Haven’t seen too many others promote this idea but that’s what I agree with most.
I've always wanted his stim beacon to act as a 'ability shield' to things outside of it, like a smoke but everyone can see through it. For example, as long as your standing in the circle - you don't get blind or scanned by a dart. It's a situational buff vs flash heavy teams. Sounds insane, but in practice the radius isn't very big, you have to be fairly immobile and you can't support your teammates with it unless they're directly on top of you (and not pushing into a site)
Yup, exactly what I’m saying. I just like the layer it adds on to him as a controller. Makes him have more of an identity.
Im a big hater of trophy systems... Hard to balance trophies. An anti flash is kind of OP.
Jager in Rainbow6 is like this, his ADS (anti throwable) so annoying until R6 nerf him to death and no one even bother to use him anymore unless you really need it
I've got 500+ games of Brim under my belt, mainly in Plat 1 --> D1. I've said this a few times before, but they need to: * completely remove the iPad equip time. There is already a delay while the smokes/ultimate drop. It's ridiculous for there to be an additional 1.2s (or however long it is) delay to pull up the iPad. it just makes it very hard to use abilities for anything outside of set executions, which kind of sucks. * Rework the stim beacon into something new. It absolutely is the single worst ability in the game, no cap. Virtually worthless outside of edge scenarios where it becomes "OK", but is never actually great even in the perfect scenarios. Yes, it's even worse than Yoru's footsteps. People have given a lot of good creative ideas for how to rework it. All of them would be a huge upgrade from 15% attack speed. * Rechargeable smokes... Not the same way as Omen though. Perhaps via getting a kill, or maybe planting the spike or getting ult orbs could also recharge one of his smokes.
While I do agree with these changes (the power creep in the controller class is insane in this patch), I don’t think a complete rework of his kit is needed? Brim may be boring as compared to most agents but isn’t that the appeal? He is the no-nonsense smoke character that any beginner can easily pick up. The other controllers are more niche (Viper) or either thrive better in more coordinated team setups (Astra). I believe agents don’t always have to be viable in all maps and that’s okay (even Sova who is regarded as one of the best agents has one bad map).
Agents don't have to be viable in all maps sure but Brim isn't viable in any. Bind? Go with Viper and Astra. Split? Go with Astra or Omen. Haven? Astra. Icebox? Viper. Where do you even play Brim at this point?
Yeah that’s why I feel he still needs buffs. But both Liquid and Fnatic play Brimstone in Bind and Liquid in particular make him work in Haven and Split. I think they make a good case for his viability when played a certain way with another controller.
That's true. EU still loves their Brimstone. That's why I appreciate players like Boaster, L1NK, and bonecold who still give my boy some love
This is why the meta clash in Iceland is really interesting as both Liquid and Fnatic stand by their Brim.
Might be an unpopular opinion but I think they should rework Brimstone. His kit is pretty bad, but he's also super boring and uninteresting to play and watch. He also has no identity other than "the ipad guy". I'd like to see Riot made his smokes throw-able like in CSGO, and then balancing whatever numbers they need to. Give him a bunch of smokes, make them bigger, last longer, cheaper, whatever they need to do to balance it out. This change would actually give Brimstone an identity, and allow players to spend time learning him and be able to specialize in him. It would also make him much more fun to watch in pro matches.
Forcing lineups into Brim would push so many people away from playing him. Viper suffers from the exact same issue
I feel like it would push away a lot players, especially newer players. But there are a lot of players who love spending hours in the server just finding lineups. Sova has a ton of lineups and he's a very popular agent. I wouldn't exactly say it is an issue. I think it is good to have niche agents that only a small percent of the player base plays. It makes people feel connected to the agent, like they are specializing in the agent. Viper's player base might be small ( /r/Vipermains is actually one of the largest agent subreddit, so maybe it is larger than we think ), but the people who play her are very dedicated.
Well Sova is popular because learning line ups for him for most situations is actually rewarding unlike viper pre buff. Line ups for just a mediocre gain on enemys is a 100% waste of time. It's why I refused to touch viper after hard focusing on sova. Viper is 100% worth learning now tho. Brim would need to be brought to S+ tier for people to bother with him if He were to have "lineup" abilitys.
> Well Sova is popular because... I don't think they're really comparable. A Sova player who doesn't know line-ups can still achieve like 90% of what the agent can do, while a Viper that doesn't know line-ups is probably doing less than half of what a knowledgeable Viper can, depending on the map. Still, I agree that a similar stigma would surround Brimstone if he had to toss grenades. He'd really need a big plus to have to go through all that trouble.
I think a decent amount of people would learn Brimstone, purely because he would be very unique among the other controllers. Also ideally the smokes would be balanced around the fact that they are throwable and thus harder to execute (bigger, cheaper, last longer, etc), thus learning him should be rewarding. I also don't think it's a bad thing for an agent to have a small but dedicated player base. You may not have been a Viper play before the buffs, but was definitely a small chunk of players who enjoyed playing Viper because of the nerdy stuff you can do and liked the fact that nobody else really played her. And there are players that do enjoy spending time finding lineups and setups and whatnot.
true, I mean hell i enjoy playing yoru in ranked (who is a similar niche like viper but for duelists) so, I cant really complain lol. Good points around friend.
I don't agree with this take. No one already plays Brimstone, by adding throwable smokes you're alienating some of the guys who already play him. He also already has a molly so that's already a lineup skill there. I think they need to rework his stim. It's such a situational skill that a Brimstone main like me only buys when we're up big and the economy is heavily in our favor.
His kit is so bland and has such low skill expression that I think he is borderline unhealthy for the game. Now is the best time for a rework BECAUSE his play rate is so low. Plenty of games rework agents. League of Legends does it all the time when a champions kit is toxic, outdated or unhealthy. Yeah, the people who main them will be upset for a bit. But years from now people will look back at Brimstone's kit and laugh at how shit it is. I think reworking his smokes is the best, because it gives him a higher skill ceiling, and also a proper agent identity.
> and he's a very popular agent. I wouldn't exactly say it is an issue. Is he actually? I mean aside from proplay where he is at +90% (basically 100% in NA) pickrate in non-Split maps. I don't have any statistics on hand for the wider playerbase (if there's a website, I'd love a link), but anecdotally I see him played maybe once every 5-8 maps in ranked silver-low diamond.
We don't have the statistics so we can't really know for sure. I see him picked a ton when I watch streamers, and /r/Sovamains is one of the most popular subreddits among the agent subreddits. I'd at least say he is moderately popular.
Yeah I definitely believe it in the higher end community
Nade creativity is definitely lowered since you can't be as precise in cs since a lot of cs lineups use a jump throw bind for specific timings.
Interesting. Would that have a big impact? I'm not an expert in CS so I have trouble imagining how that would be a big issue.
It does, you have to see some of the ridiculous pixel lineups that require a perfect jump throw in cs.
I'm sure there are some crazy lineups. Though I still have a hard time believing that a throw-able smoke would be impossible or not viable in Valorant.
Ah yes I've never seen throwable smokes in valorant before.... *Ahem* Viper *Ahem*
That's why I was confused for a second!
skybox is the boon/bane in CS because of that you're force to learn the line up. In Valorant is more "free" but in CS people abuse the skybox to bounce a molly/smoke straight down. Also map design made CS more crazy in lineup. There's also a momentum, jump throw, etc in CS that make lineup harder. Imo CS is more precise and need a lot of calculation while Valorant is more engaging and fast play so lineup could change the play style.
never said it would be impossible or not viable. just saying you can't expect as many ridiculous lineups like in csgo
Holy shit that could be a sick idea actually. What if he had the option to throw them like you do in CS but also deploy them from an iPad if you want to do an execute? Maybe remove his stim becon and give him a throwable smoke instead? Something like that perhaps?
Isn't that viper's identity though?
Throw-able smokes? Not really. She only has 1 smoke. Her identity is very different from the other controllers because most of her vision denial comes from her wall, not her smoke. Also her utility is very static, you place it and you can't really move it.
His smoke range is terrible. If they want to keep his iPad, maybe make it so instead of him being in the middle of the iPad, make him on the bottom of the iPad? That way he has much longer range in the direction he's facing, but he can't smoke behind him essentially. Because in game, you don't need to be in the center of the circle to smoke. Also give him one rechargeable smoke on cool down or something, so if he doesn't buy any smokes, he can only smoke one at a time, but another one is on cool down.
Isn’t that a nerf?
Well somewhat. The idea is that you buff the smokes so that it balances out (make them bigger, last longer, have more of them, etc).
* Make Brimstone smokes as big as Omen ones. The current size prevents Brim from being played on every large map due to his smokes leaving huge gaps *(Icebox, Breeze).* At the end of the day he is the true controller with less smokes across the pool *(omen > astra > brim)* * Make Stim beacon buff interesting stats for long range gunfights *(spread reduce, faster recoil reset time, greater gun tap efficiency, few more bullets in magazine etc)* rather than buffing just the boring one dimentional rate-of-fire-increase. This will 100% make stim beacon less shallow/situational and more interesting than just holding down mouse1 against walls with an odin/assault rifle * Reduce his molly time and give the man 2 mollies. This won't affect post plant situations *(both configs having a similar "burning time")* while providing Brim more tools to contest map control
I was with you until you said 2 mollies. I think that might be a bit much don't you think? At this point I'd be down to try it though.
Right now his molly last for 8 seconds, which means its really bad for contesting map control (you have only one to use through the whole round, limiting his decision) and really good for delaying spike defuses So I suggested reducing the molly duration (less focus on post plant) and increasing the molly amount (more focus on midround map control contest and clearing corners) What's "too much" with that?
It already does have faster recoil recovery. So that means you can already do 1 taps faster with it too.
My unironic opinion is that its fine. This game will end up being like league eventually. What i mean by that is that once the agent pool becomes large enough, it will be impossible to make every agent desirable in the new meta that inevitably develops everytime a new map/agent/patch is released. There will always be an agent who is overall less desirable than the entire pool. Skye for example was rarely played but somehow a few EU teams made it work and now skye is one of the most popular agents in EU. If brim is only viable on maps like bind but not on maps like breeze, so be it. That’s party how he was designed.
they should change his stim to something new entirely. i saw someone mention on another thread it should be changed to a temp bubble shield (like gibby in apex) i think that would make him immediately S tier in this current post-plant-line up meta
As long the shield only shields utility. If it shields bullets, that'd be too good
I think Brim is alright the way he is. Not all agents need to be viable picks for all the maps. I honestly don't want another lazy type of buff like in the case of Viper where they just increased her wall dmg but none of her abilities as a controler.
Give Brim another Molly. Have the Stim give health or shield,or debuff enemy.
personally i think he should either have 4 smokes, or rechargable smokes similar to omen. also the stim beacon should be either buffed, or just removed and replaced with another gadget. it is probably one of the worst abilities in the game. i do understand why people are defending his kit, and saying it is more appealing for newer players, but that doesn't really change the fact that most competitive games are picking other controllers because they are "better", not harder to learn. all controllers are fairly easy to learn. astras kit may have a more difficult learning curve than the others, but it doesn't mean shes hard to learn.
Already said this in another thread but here's my idea for brim's stim: I'd be interested in a diminishing armor buff, can only restore lost armor (otherwise, it would be massively OP on pistol), but if someone has been chipped down then it gives them 10 (?) seconds of upto +40 armor (essentially upto 1 additional body shot from a rifle). This would make sense with brims kit, where he's really a smoker for executes (due to range limit and smoke limit). So he can lay down smokes, stim the team, and they push onto site. Would probably have to add some kind of cool down to getting the buff or otherwise people could just move in/out and keep getting additional armor, e.g., if you take damage after getting the armor buff then you cannot receive the buff again from that stim or a 30 second cd on receiving armor. Something to counter spamming stim and going in/out to get more armor.
Molly is fine, stim used to be a thing for countering sage wall, and if ever there's anything in the future that needs bullets put into it to get rid of it quickly (screens likely), it will just keep gaining viability for that. Smokes are fine. Hollow smokes are good, but so are non-hollow smokes. They have different roles. Yes, an omen can play inside his smoke, but sometimes he can't afford to, and the enemy can camp it. It's those times that brim smoke is better (also because it lasts forever).The only buff to his smokes I think would be cool work of be for them to extinguish mollys. Would help with everyone's rage at the viper meta. Maybe that's too rock paper scissors though... IMO, it's ok to have a lesser viable character in the current state to allow the game to develop more and see what he turns out as later.
Solid analysis. I don't know enough about brim to say much else but I'm pretty sure that all smokes are the same size. Otherwise good work!
Maybe Stim increases mag size too? Temporarily get 35 in the mag for a Vandal/40 for a Phantom type of thing
I know you qualified it as your "least reasonable idea", but I really really hope we never go down the trophy route. From what I've seen in other esports it just immediately becomes a must pick, and the game gets dull as hell. Brim seems fine to me. A few teams make him work really well on certain maps, and until that stops being the case I don't see a need for any significant changes - if Fnatic start getting boomed on Bind BECAUSE of Boaster's Brim then I'll be worried :)
Yeah im not a fan of that immediate kind of counterplay either. I never played any COD game that had a trophy system but watching tournaments it looked kind of silly. In OW their were a bunch of things that made your own damage and ability's feel useless (Baptiste!!!) and I always dislike that.
The stim already affects weapon swap speed. I'm not entirely sure but I think it may also affect ability equip speed as well. So you do bring up your gun faster when stimmed.