WARNING: A whole lot of letters incoming
Since the Overwatch “development” team went off on a crusade to drop Brigitte’s pick rate to near zero over a year ago, in mid-August 2019, I’ve been thinking it’d be nice to have her at least as a HotS hero. And by “it’d be nice to have her at least as a HotS hero” I mean “I WANT MY SWEDISH GIRL BACK FOR CRYING OUT LOUD and it ain’t happening in Overwatch”.
Long story short, there was Brigitte, she got a big pack of sledgehammer nerfs that was called a rework, made her absolute garbage and ruined her identity as a hero, after some time Grandmasters (you know, that portion of the playerbase that is so tiny it could as well not exist) began to manage to get value out of her in a meta that heavily favored the downgraded kit, Blizzard threw additional nerfs at Brigitte ignoring all the negative feedback regarding that (and the outbursts that came alongside the last sets of nerfs were ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE) and straight up lying in the “developer comments” and two months ago or so GM stopped playing Brigitte in a meta that she specifically was designed to thrive against.
Most of Brigitte’s kit should be pretty easy to implement. And I mean THE Brigitte, valiant defender and bodyguard for supports, not that one hell of a mess that exists in Overwatch right now and can’t even fight back when attacked, which is the most basic self-defence.
- Inspire? A weak AoE heal over time that procs when hitting stuff with basic attacks.
- Shield bash? Quick short dash that stops at the first enemy hit and stuns them. Available only when Barrier Shield is available too.
- Whip Shot? Channeled skillshot that extends with time and knocks the first target hit back. also procs Inspire
- Repair Pack? Instant ranged heal with a travel time that transfers overheal into temporary shields that take reduced damage.
- Rally (ultimate/heroic ability)? Essentially Sound Barrier but shields build up to a cap over time instead of being an isntant massive decaying burst and grant damage reduction while prersent.
- Shileds from RP and Rally might be of a different color since they're supposed to be armor, not a shield, as in physical stuff that blocks damage and gets broken
- Barrier Shield? Alright, that's the tricky part since there is nothing similar in the game (Braum in League of Legends has a thing like this, though). It's a Shield (duh) that blocks all single-target abilities and basic attacks done to Brigitte from the front when it's deployed but doesn't allow Brigitte to do anything other than moving and activating the heroic and slows movement speed. Blocked damaged is applied to the shield itself that has a limited amount of health which regenerates when the shiled isn't active and if the health gets fully depleted the shield goes on a long cooldown. AoE like Fel Flame will just go through the barrier dealing damage to it, Brigitte and whoever there is behind them, abilities that pierce a specific number of targets like Sleep Dart will count the shield as another hero and bouncy things like Hungering Arrow will treat it like that too. It would also be great to have projectiles blocked, like Tychus' grenade thrown behind Brigitte with her shield up will detonate when colliding the shield and ranged basic attacks aimed for something behind Brigitte will be eaten up too buuut I guess that's gonna be a beeatch to code. Dunno. I'm not a coder. But it'd be great.
- Second heroic ability? Well, I have an idea for that. Dunno how well it will settle in the game (probably gonna cause some broken combos but hey, Divine Shield makes a hero straight up invulnerable) but as someone who is a protector kind of person in games like HotS i absolutely love it. So here it is: an ability that makes part of all the damage done to an ally to be dealt to Brigitte instead and lasts for a few seconds or until Brigitte and her target wander too far off each other. I believe it would fit perfectly into Brigitte's defender character. In terms of lore it can be some high-tech mumbo-jumbo. C'mon they have a disk thingy that makes people immortal in the Overwatch universe, surely they also can come up with a damage transfer
As for role, Brigitte could be a bruiser or tank with support capabilites like Yrel or E.T.C. except those two gain it from talents and Brigitte would have it baseline or a utility support capable of being on the frontlines with healing that can be good in a pinch but pretty bad overall like Uther.
Abilities could be mixed up or altered a little (like Mei’s ultimate became a basic ability and a basic ability became a Heroic option); maybe some of them straight up removed and replaced by new ones. The main point is to re-create that feeling of a valiant defender who could go on the frontline for a few seconds and allow tanks to catch their breath, recover and stand firm again protecting their team or aggressively get right in the face of a Genji of Doomfist who were after a vulnerable support like Ana and be like: “Oh, you wanted to harm my teammate? Well, you’ll have to get past me first!”. The feeling that was completely stripped away from Brigitte back in August 2019 and which is most likely not coming back at this point.
I miss the original Brigitte. I miss her a lot. This whole “rework” still feels kinda surreal and same goes for the fact that Brigitte has been effectively deleted from Overwatch for over a year. You know, she was the only Overwatch hero I instantly (kinda) fell in love with. When I was looking through the hero roster in the practice range and saw her I thought at first: “A melee hero in a shooter? Oh man, that’s gonna suck! That Reinhardt dude at least has a massive barrier behind which his entire team can hide, but this girl’s shield is puny!”. And I was kinda right. Even before that disgrace of a rework Brigitte could’ve been easily dispatched by long-ranged heroes unless she already was very close to them or was protected by tanks and supports. But then I saw Brigitte’s Defender Highlight Intro (best damn intro in the entire game) and was just like: “Aight. I’m in love now.” And I started playing her. And loved her even more. And then Blizzard just gutted the poor girl.
I tried to mod Brigitte into Skyrim as a companion. Found a face preset but wasn’t very happy about it (the author even forgot about freckles for Christ’s sake!) so I had to make my own which wasn’t great either because I suck. Then I fought the super buggy Creation Kit (the program used to make Skyrim mods) and it didn’t end well for me. I’m a very weak person and failures and hard-to-pass obstacles discourage me a lot so it took forever to piece together even a very buggy basic mod that broke a whole lot of in-game things. But the mod itself was functional. I played Skyrim with it… aaand it just made me miss Brigitte even more since it was nowhere close to the real thing. I guess I could commission the mod from someone who’s good at modding and whose Creation Kit doesn’t refuse to cooperate but I don’t really have a lot of spare money right now. But hey, at least I have Brigitte in The Sims 4. She tinkers with tech and hangs out with D.Va. It’s nice but it doesn’t cover for the valiant defender part.
Overwatch is out of the question since Blizzard made it perfectly clear over the past year that it doesn’t want to see Brigitte played and there is no guarantee that a Skyrim mod even if done well will suffice. Ash from Paladins reminds me of Brigitte with the playstyle I use and her attitude but they still are two very different characters. So I guess that leaves HotS. I know that recourses are extremely limited even though HotS is doing about a hundred times better than OW in terms of enjoyabilty and another hero is most likely in the works to be released in winter, half a year after Mei and a full year after Deathwing and there probably is a list of heroes scheduled but can Brigitte be squeezed in after the next hero? Pretty please?
P. S. To any Brigitte haters that can pop up in the comments. Please, shut your traps and stay silent or go to the cesspool Overwatch forum is and hate there or else I’ll haunt you in your dreams. Probably. No promises.