I mean, realistically I’d like to see a set of gradients detailed to the playerbase transparently so we could at least SEE what the devs were thinking. Then we could communicate. I know people be like “no one does this!” and to that I say: Their primary competitor, Riot, does indeed do this. On every single champion. Idk Valorant, but they have gradients. In detail: Collection->Champions->Pick one->Overview->A nice little pie picture thing with three rings to signify low/medium/high amounts of these stats Damage/Toughness/Crowd Control/Mobility/Utility. Some champs have multiples at a low and medium amount, very few champs have more than one stat at the high amount.
I say that because I’m very scared for how much or how little they are going to change things up. In (game/balance) theory Bastion should be the highest damage over time and around midlevel to highest burst damage because he gives up his mobility ENTIRELY. But you can outdps him with Junkrat or Zarya. No one should be more mobile than Tracer who is given 0 cc because of that mobility, but then they released Doomfist and just forgot that rule. Soldier is the definition of their balance theory, and yet he has fallen off hard for McCree. McCree has a stun, a small dash with a reload on it (why?), high damage with good headshot damage (relevant, some heroes can’t headshot at all), has a burst option with no cd save checking if he has ammo (so his reload time?), and then an ultimate that he can cancel to reload again. What’s his gradient? And why can he do all that?
Look at Sombra. She has a delay going into stealth and going out of stealth, but it lasts forever so thats good? But she can be damaged out of stealth. Her translocator cleanses her of cc, but has a hefty cd and can be destroyed (can it be destroyed mid throw btw?) and telegraphs where she’s going super hard. Her hack has a cast time interrupted by walls and any sort of damage and barriers, but it lasts a while. What’s her gradient?
I could write a longer essay, but I don’t know what point I’m making short of: I don’t know how much I trust the devs to balance and diversify their heroes. Look what happened to Symmetra, and look how nothing happened to Pharahmercy. Elo is not the problem in these discussions- its the “we’re releasing a game that genuinely looks like it was just OW1 content that we saved to release all at once, but call it OW2”. I’da left if I was Jeff too.