At the time Brig got slammed with nerfs, the healer dominating ladder from bronze to masters was Ana. Brig was only top healer for GM. Despite Brig being so-so in ladder, she got nerfed anyway.
The same applies to the rest.
During doubleshield “meta” despite people complaining about the shield. The reality was that it was only a must pick at masters and GM. For the rest of ladder “doubleshield” had a different meaning. Rather than Sigma/Orisa, the top two tanks from bronze to diamond was Orisa and Reinhardt. But because they had no synergy, they ended up on opposite teams. One on attack, the other on defense, and they brought up their offtanks with them. In the history of forced 2-2-2, that was the point ladder had the most tank diversity. Rather than the constant Reinhardt mirror matches today, ladder during “doubleshield” meta actually had two comps competing with each other (And FYI, between their offtanks Zarya, Roadhog and Sigma, Sigma was the least picked), Reinhardt and his deathball comp on attack, and Orisa with her bunker comp on defense.
Then Orisa got nerfed twice, and with her gone, the top two tanks on ladder became Reinhardt and Zarya. Rather than the rivalry Rein and Orisa had, Rein and Zarya were actually the best tank combo and they’ve pretty much put ladder in Rein/Zar prison since then.
Note that double shield was apparently still meta in 2020 for the absolute top despite Orisa being bottom of the barrel and barely played. So end result was that tanking on ladder ended up worse while the top continued to complain as if nothing had changed.
The question is, where are they OP?
This is Orisa’s shield breaking instantly in front of Mei, Zen and D.va. Just three heroes that aren’t even particularly damage oriented (Zen and Mei are more like snipers, and D.va is firing from long range). And this should be one of Orisa’s best defense maps but just a bit of pressure and she was already being run over. In most situations, even the defense ones, Reinhardt works better at defense than the bunker tank.
BTW, people keep bringing up fortify as if it’s some sort of immortality ability. But in practice, it only works against burst damage and surprise attacks, it doesn’t hold up against any kind of pressure. Think of it more as an escape enabler rather than defense.
People on this forum complain about these meta heroes because they’re all in GM apparently and suffering from these mega OP/meta/unbalanced/broken heroes. Even though they aren’t even remotely oppressive in every other rank.
Not sure about hanzo/cree, I was mainly referring to orisa/bap/brig. Brig is like one of the worst support in every other rank and only starts becoming viable within diamond to GM (according to overbuff). And while bap is doing pretty good outside of GM, ana and mercy constantly out ranks him, so his not right at the top.
The best indicator you can use for hero strength on overbuff is GM pickrate. Because GM is where people are reaching their reasonable potential, balance changes can have a higher impact on which heroes are good to use in matches, and stronger heroes will tend to be used more. The people who do not use those heroes can fall to Master rank.
Keep in mind that if a hero was picked 100% of the time, the winrate would actually be 50% - mirror matches are a big factor here. Also, for niche heroes that are only picked in very specific scenarios, their winrates are often very inflated - for example, in GM most players are only picking Sym for TP strats on maps like Lijiang, and then promptly swapping off if it doesn’t immediately work. This creates a positive feedback bias.
it’s because people look at winrates only when they want to look at winrates, most of the times those heroes are something you switch to or switch off from, to counter, to mirror or for any reason like contesting, etc and the resulting winrate is deflated/inflated.
which makes winrates of any hero frequently swap to/from completely unreliable, mainly due to the way winrates are computed, which is kind of funny i guess
The month of Gigahog was interesting in that it showed this isn’t the case. When Hog was pulling 100% pick rate in GM, he was still able to get higher than 50% win rates because GMs don’t only fight other GMs.
Get people to play all the “niche” Dps and their win-rates will be far, far lower than what Cassidy, Bap, Hanzo and Brig have, heck Sombra is barely played and has the lowest win-rate
As much as they can sometimes get easy value, getting long-term value (i.e. consistent value across many games) with these heroes is difficult, Bap in-particular is by far the hardest Support to pick up
You gotta remember, the average player isn’t good at the game but people get very carried away over game changing plays, which all these heroes are good at doing
Though I will say, it’s kinda weird how GMs play Cassidy when they’re losing more than they’re winning, I start to wonder if they’re just using him as an anti-Tracer tool or something, giving enough time they’ll drop out of GM if they only play him
but on GM:
ana picked rate 17.29% winrate 55.5% (highest winrate support on GM)
zen pickrate 21.65% winrate 55.20% (2nd highest)
bap pickrate 20.42% winrate 52.96% (lowest winrate)
Because he was meta so the more people he’s against that are also playing Baptiste the closer to 50% win rate you will be because only 1 baptiste can win
though, that doesn’t apply to non-meta heroes and non-meta heroes have win rates all over the place, like some weeks you see a non-meta hero with 46% win rate in GM then the week after you’ll see them with 57% win rate cause maybe like 2 people are playing that hero and it’s a good week for them lol
Moira for example in GM had a 33% win rate on January 6th and then on January 7th had a 83% win rate lol. And today so far Moira has a 40% win rate in GM that’s how crazy the win rates are for truly non-meta heroes lol
swapping ingame skews that overbuff data i guess especially if someone picks a hero and immediately swaps off. so faulty data?
i think overbuff would be more accurate IF the game was like paladins where once you pick a hero your that hero the whole game. then overbuff would be interesting if that was the case
The only explaination I can think of is maybe they are doing Ana/Brig vs Bap/Zen a lot because if you look at other ranks Ana is a huge pick and her win rates are much closer to 50% than GM
Nice little explanation that tries to disprove or give little importance to wintares, but its faulty. Although you think that is your trump card to end all discussion to winrates, its not.
There are plenty of 1 tricks in masters and GM that don’t always choose what’s meta or strongest. Only in OWL does what you described happen.
But anyway, Overbuff is inaccurate, as it doesn’t even have the correct class for heroes like Sym, and last time i heard it doesn’t take private profiles into account. So the stats are far from 100% accurate. At best gives you a general idea of things.
Anyhow Blizzards own internal stats are clearly telling them some heroes need help.
Like Cree for example. They dont just use nonsense like “Hes in every game so that means he is OP”
It evident on how they have been trying to help him out constantly, because he is underperforming. Plain and simple.
Again underperforming doesn’t mean popularity.
Based on the most accurate stats available. Blizzards own.
Although i dont like the Hanzo buff , i can also see and understand that he was also underperforming based on his WR and their stats.
We can argue till our faces turn blue but in the end its all right there with Blizzard themselves trying to tweak the heroes that need it based on non-faulty stats and info.
Dead Eye is a terrible ultimate, McCree has bad mobility and they just nerfed his range.
Hanzo’s projectile speed is super slow and easy to dodge.
Now if you look at Soldier he out damages McCree and is an entry level hero. He’s more oppressive than any dps besides Tracer atm. Widow is scary on certain maps too.
