Define viable though. If I’ve learned anything about this game, it’s that all heroes can’t be equal.
What if I use Lucio to speed boost and retreat for a moment. Ana’s nade comes with counterplay.
Full retreat is hardly counterplay to an ability that makes entire pushes invalid because it makes healers useless. That’s called losing game. it doesn’t stop anti-healed people from dying either.
There are certain heroes that just wouldn’t really fit a meta. If something like brigitte mei doomfist became meta it just wouldn’t be good, same thing applies to reaper. He’s just not a hero that can be viable without being broken (in his current state anyway)
We came to this point a long time ago
Totally agree with this, buffed the wrong part of his kit.
He will still be trash in high ranks and crush tank players in low ranks even more.
Really a great way to make new players playing anything but Tanks because we have too many Tank players anyways.
Oh, wait.
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I started off in silver/low gold. At those lower ranks where Reaper is supposedly a problem, Symmetra/Torb turrets are a much bigger problem. “Hey lets just ignore the turrets and walk right into a fight”.
For anyone that wants to climb out of silver, just learn where to put turrets and win.
Honestly I don’t think you’re ever going to do that with a shotgun hero. Shotguns are notoriously hard to balance in normal FPS games, let alone a hybrid game like Overwatch. Even slight numerical changes can make shotguns OP or totally trash.
The closest you could come with Reaper is punishing him a lot more his misses and rewarding him a lot more for accurate headshots, but that’s gonna mean he becomes really unrewarding for average players and really broken for pros who don’t miss. People have kicked this idea around for Widow and Hanzo as well, saying they should keep their instant kill potential but have way longer time between shots to reward good aim and punish relying too much on follow-ups. The truth is this will never really bother the highest skilled players as they’re able to adapt to anything pretty much, but it makes these heroes way harder to use at normal levels of play.
In all my years gaming, one thing I’ve picked up on is shotguns will never be balanced in any game. They’re either broken cheese or they’re so useless you’re better off with a spammable full auto gun in point blank range. I can’t even think of any competitive FPS meta that ever heavily used shotguns, even when they were meme-tier overpowered in a normal lobby, they’d always be off-meta because of the lack of versatility in high level play. An organized competitive team will always be able to simply avoid the shotgun users and counter them with positioning.
Honestly you could give Reaper one hit kills on his mouse1 and I bet you in OWL he would still only ever kill about one person at a time before he dies, he’d just end up trading every fight. Or killing nobody because Zarya bubbled his target and then he was forced to Wraith away. His entire concept is difficult to fit into this game.
Thats kinda not the topic right now, but I am pretty sure that adding just another problem won’t fix those issues.
So you are mad that say a middle tier DPS at low tiers got bumped into the bottom of the top tier? Doesn’t sound like a big problem to me. If you think Reaper is good at those ranks you should have seen release day Brig that was supposedly “just fine” according to the forums.
Reaper already has one which is his complete lack of range, yet he doesnt have any proper way to get near before getting deleted
I saw release day Brig. This is still not a Brig, Torb or Symmetra topic though.
He has one ability that can either let him close the gap or escape. So you can either get poked to death, or wraith in and get a kill then get killed. Great hero.
Saying they wouldnt fot a meta isnt saying “shouldnt be viable”
Personally i think certain heroes shouldnt be meta because the community will cry until their back to F tier
See doomfist
Luckily for me I don’t listen to people who’s only qualification is “being good at a video game.” Might as well listen to a coastal bird.
Sounds like he’s scared he will get the Mercy/Brig/Doom treatment someday into the future. Overbuff, then nerf to the ground.
There is a serious pattern here, people should be concerned when their hero gets Overtuned. It may not be a good thing in the long run when Blizzard finally brings in the nerf bat. (Reaper is more viable in mid ranks now, but how much? Don’t know yet).
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Well, I guess skill doesn’t correlate with intelligence
Ideally they’d have buffed a worse part of reaper to potentially avoid the sledgehammer later down the line.
I really hope they manage to break free from the pattern of making/creating overtuned heroes and then having to hit them with 7 nerfs, it doesn’t really benefit the game at all, it only causes turmoil.
Exactly, thats why he needs a rework, his design is either suicidal, doing nothing or being dependent on healers
Certainly, the reality is some heroes are always going to be stronger and other weaker at any given time and this is true of every game.
Now what constitutes as “viable”? Well, not everyone has the same definition, but to me, it essentially means that the hero at least doesn’t feel like a genuine disadvantage (at least, within their niche if they have one) even if they aren’t the absolute peak of optimal and that they can scale to at least some degree with player skill.
I don’t personally believe a hero has to be optimal in every situation, but I do think they should be at least truly solid within a niche and have some possibility to overcome their disadvantages (to a degree) with enough skill and effort.
Mhm, this is why I think Reaper needs at least a soft rework of sorts that improves upon his kit, even if it may mean shifting a little power away from his guns.
I mean, we technically do have other shotguns in game and they mostly haven’t been too problematic so I don’t think balancing Reaper’s would be impossible. He just needs to not have all eggs in one basket.
Giving him two charges on Wraith would alleviate that issue, make it like Junkrat’s mine.
It still won’t ever fix the fact that it is easy for an organized team to focus him down right away. You can already get a sneaky ambush into an enemy team and be forced to Wraith out very fast before you do anything meaningful. You’re gonna get bashed by Brig, frozen by Mei, flashed by McCree, etc. so fast. You’re honestly lucky if you’re even able to hit your Wraith to escape half the time.
Because everyone with a brain knows you kill the Reaper immediately, because he actually is ridiculously strong when he’s not being dealt with. The balancing problems starts here. You have a hero that is designed to dish out very high damage in very close range, the only way you counter that is to shut him down immediately and kill him. That’s always going to happen to Reaper when he’s being run against a competent team.
Give him instant teleporting around the map with no cooldown. I bet you any money he still struggles to actually do his job against good teams. The concept of a squishy DPS hero being only viable in very close range is an inherently bad design for a game like Overwatch.
A rework is in order. It can be as simple as a tweak and a new ability. He now has 2 charges on Wraith and he has a right click that fires shotgun slugs instead of buckshot, they’re medium range projectiles that have a big damage falloff right around the same range as Hog’s right click. Reaper now has viable ways to close distance or retreat and he has an attack that makes him viable outside of point blank range. That’s what is really needed with Reaper - an alternate fire that makes him more dynamic.