Bap, Brig, and Blizzard: "A Tale of Failed Balances"

General Discussion
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In the constant discussions that have taken place on this forum regarding Baptiste and Brig, the similarities of communal disdain, suggestions, and designs of the heroes is by no coincidence.

The constant argument at play is “These heroes do too much”.

Why? Why do these heroes do too much? What parts of their kits make them feel as though they can do everything? What is most important here is understanding how these heroes function and why they have been so impactful within the various metas they have existed.

Let’s start with Brig, as understanding how she is able to “unfairly” influence matches is critical in laying the ground work for how Baptiste functions and how he has “unfairly” impacted the game.

There is a constant communal complaint about the ever present CC the game has. Brig is one of many heroes possessing CC cooldowns in her kit. Shield Bash, while wildly frustrating, is incredibly situational as an ability. In fact, all a player has to do to avoid it is not be within 6m of the hero. The design of this ability was made with the intention of allowing a support hero to negate a close range dive or flank hero. Again, while frustrating, the ability on its own is not “bad” by design. What it effectively does is gives support players an alternative hero when their DPS refuse to swap to CC for a Genji/Doomfist/Tracer/Winston/Ball. Counterplay is what makes OW OW. Two supports in the game have CC, those being Brig and Ana, vs countless Tanks and DPS. I would argue this ability is not what made Brig so powerful, but arguably bloated her kit.

If one form of CC was contentious, then two forms of CC is unfair. Whipshot which is another of Brig’s cooldowns, allows the hero to boop enemies from up to 20m away. The main design of this ability was again to deny Dive heroes space and positioning. Yet Shield Bash already functions as a form of CC for heroes who already positioned too aggressively. In addition to her ranged boop, Whipshot also activates Brig’s self heal and her AOE team heal. So with one ability, Brig can boop from range effectively denying positioning, self heal, and AOE heal. This is an obviously bloated cooldown unlike Shield Bash which provides a stun to enemies within 6m and an inkling of mobility for Brig. This is the first of Brig’s problematic cooldowns.

Next up is what I believe to be the primary issue with the hero. If removed entirely from the game, I believe this hero’s impact would see a steep decline and may actually achieve a state of balance. What I am referring to is her Repair Packs.

What? Are you joking Mako? Nope. You see, it’s not that Brig can stun and boop (though it is problematic), it’s that Brig can effectively peel/pocket an ally from range, while simultaneously booping or stunning a target AND providing AOE heals to allies around her AND self heal in the process. It’s wildly bloated and why the hero is unfair and imbalanced.

Now let’s talk about what the devs have done to try and “fix” this hero vs what should have been done. Brig’s passive healing has been reduced multiple times. The cooldowns on Whipshot and Shield Bash have been tweaked several times. Her Ultimate cost has been changed several times. Her health pool has been altered. Her barrier health has been altered. Her Repair Packs have received several nerfs.

While these mildly reduced her oppression, none of them solved the issue of her over-bloated kit.

What needed to happen- Whipshot no longer boops and no longer heals allies, and Repair Pack entirely removed or changed altogether has never happened. Because Brig can still functionally do what makes her broken: Pocket an ally while providing AOE heals, stun, boop and damage enemies. As long as she can fundamentally perform this, she will remain broken for the highest level of play.

Now whatever you want to disagree with or what parts of her kit frustrate you doesn’t really matter- As long as she can pocket an ally AND AOE Heal, Self Heal, Stun, Boop and damage enemies AT THE SAME TIME she WILL be broken.

So how does Brig relate to Baptiste? Well for starters, both heroes have bloated kits. Immort or not, Bap has vertical mobility, ranged AOE healing, ability AOE healing, self healing, and a powerful hitscan weapon. Immort is the icing on the bloated cake.

Now what makes Bap so effective? Sure you could say he has an anti-death button, but a situational cooldown on a 25sec timer is not carrying the hero. The primary aspect of Bap’s kit that carries him is the excessive AOE healing he can put out, along with powerful hitscan damage.

Much like Brig, the hero has near simultaneous effects on multiple fronts of a fight. He can self heal, heal allies, and still damage enemies at nearly the same time.

This multi-layered impact is compounded with the presence of Immort. However, even without Immort Bap, unlike Brig without Repair Packs, would still be a wildly powerful hero. Because a situational ability on a 25sec cooldown isn’t what carries the hero. It’s broken self sustain, powerful AOE, and powerful damage.

While different in execution, Bap and Brig have a strong functional similarity.

Brig can pocket/peel an ally while performing various other actions in a fight. Bap can self sustain and “peel” an ally while performing various other actions in a fight. Regen Burst allows Bap to tank 150dmg, heal multiple allies, and not stop damaging/healing a target. The ability enables him to consistently work independently of his allies by reducing the frequency at which they must support/peel him. Again, Immort is the icing on the cake here. None of this gameplay disappears with a removal or rework of the ability, the same way Brig does not stop being oppressive as long as Repair Pack exists.

Blanket, baseless ideas and thoughts on how to balance heroes and their abilities does not solve a hero’s oppressiveness. The fundamentals of how that hero is consistently impactful or oppressive is not tied to a 25sec situational cooldown. That is the essence of inconsistency. And it’s why many players who play Bap lose games, as they treat Immort as a “get out of jail free card” for themselves and sloppy teammates. But that’s inconsistent, and why the hero has the second worst win percentage of any support in the game.

To balance these heroes and reduce their oppression, alter what they are permitted to do on a consistent basis, rather than a situational one. Rework/remove Repair Pack. Reduce the effects of Whipshot. Rework/remove Regen Burst. Reduce the damage output Bap has. Fundamentally alter the consistency of these heroes and you balance them.

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Can I get a TLDR please?

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Uh, I didn’t read everything but yes

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I think the OP’s most basic point is that the consistent parts of Bap and Brigitte’s kits (bap’s primary/secondary, brig’s whipshot/repair packs) are way too consistent compared to other heroes, especially when realistically the both of them have the highest numerical self-sustain of all the supports (the others have CC, nothing, or mobility). That is, in essence, the reason why the both of them are currently strong and oppressive in the right hands.

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That’s an excellent summation.

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Here’s a better way to look at it since the problem is way deeper the just Brig and Bapt: Blizzard likes to add “solutions” as a workaround to fix a problem rather then just straight up fix the problem.

Brig = Hypermobility/Dive
Bapt = Excessive Burst and Ultimate Damage

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This explains how these heroes were designed and supposed to be played extremely well.

I always thought it was weird that people complain about Bap because of the immortality field even though there are other abilities/ults that save teammates from death or reverse them.

I’ve also noticed that most of the heroes released after Brig (Sigma, Bap, Echo’s ult) were designed to do everything at once. This may sound like a good idea at first, but it is completely unhealthy for a game like OW. We need heroes that are unique and good at certain tasks, not heroes that make other ones irrelevant because they can do the same job plus everything else.

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The biggest failed balance of all is why Bap and Brig were released. Brig’s story is well-known. She was released all because the devs wanted to avoid nerfing Tracer. If dive was properly addressed it would have never happened.

Bap is very much the same way. People started running GOATs because oneshots were so oppressive. And tanks couldn’t be instagibbed by Widow or Hanzo. So when the devs wanted to enforce 2-2-2 they still had the problem of oneshots (and high burst damage in general, thanks to the number of DPS buffs during GOATs). So to prevent the meta from sinking back into “sniper diff”, they instead opted for the route of giving a new hero the ability to prevent that problem.

Hate them all you want but if you want to point fingers at anything, point them at hypermobility and burst damage, which are the root problems that Blizzard refused to fix.

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I’ll sum it up: these heroes punish making plays, and have kits that straight out win duels through easy to use abilities. That’s why people don’t like them. Sig falls into the same boat, and so does new hog to a certain extent.

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Funny how this is always framed as problematic instead of the other abilities which randomly fail, isn’t it.

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Bap is straight up the Word “power creep.”

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The only ability in the game that randomly fails for no particular reason is Symmetra’s teleporter (I think, not 100% sure on that), which is a whole other thing compared to the place of Brigitte and Baptiste in the support design realm. There are other abilities that get cancelled on death or sometimes don’t work properly, like Roadhog’s Hook or ultimates like Nano Boost, but none of these are relevant to what the actual topic is here.

These abilities are problematic because heroes like Baptiste and Brigitte have constant high-impact with large amounts of healing supplied consistently (Baptiste has his own cooldown for healing on top of a massive AoE healing secondary, Brigitte has multi-charge low-cooldown repair packs and a passive AoE heal). In addition they both have high amounts of self sustain (regenerative burst has high self heal & exo boots allow for otherwise impossible escapes, Brigitte has a shield & shield bash has high mobility) which allows both heroes to be consistently providing high impact on a fight.

That’s a problem because that consistent input is as strong as input other heroes have with less uptime/consistency. Ana, for example, has similar amounts of high healing & impact but her self-sustain is extremely limited compared to Baptiste & Brigitte.

It gets even worse when you have heroes with lower amounts of strong impact during a fight - that’s what lower consistency is in this case. Roadhog, for example, has all of his strongest plays based on his Hook cooldown, so he doesn’t provide a strong impact over the duration of an entire fight like Brig & Bap do. Symmetra, as an additional example, has extremely low consistency because her most consistent form of high damage - her beam - needs to be charged and she needs to not die while using it, which often takes Symmetra the entirety of a fight to set-up properly.

…TL;DR this has nothing to do with being random or not, this has everything to do with how often and how much characters can provide impact to a fight, which is what Brig & Bap excel in through strong healing and high self-sustain.

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When Brig was released, Tracer had sub-30% pickrate in OWL, about the same as Junkrat. For comparison, Widow had 70+. Hanzo was also emerging as the 2nd most played DPS, clearly indicating the start of a new meta.
Ladder-wise, Tracer had negative winrates under Diamond and mediocre everywhere else. Rein was played more than Winston for every bracket but GM, with a higher winrate to boot. The Dive meta was not a reality for the 99% of players.

Brig was a solution to the “problem” that was already gone by that time and was just perpetuated by a forum echo chamber.

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He’s been on a rant about Mei too… methinks the Lady Doth Protest Too Much…

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Unfortunately that’s because of development time. They could have remade her kit but it would obviously take a long time.

Dive complaints were present on every OW community.

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“These heroes punish making plays”

Translation: they are some of the only supports who can punish disorganized, uncoordinated, brain-dead actions by enemies.

Their issue isn’t what they do against enemies. If you read the OP you’d understand that. The issue is how they consistently enable allies. Not how they deny enemies.

But as a Doomfist 1-trick, I fully expect you to biasedly hate Brig and Bap no matter what. Which makes sense because Doomfist is a zero value hero if he positions and engages incorrectly.

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Now that’s BS. Almost every single cooldown and ultimate I’ve used in this game has failed at random, for seemingly no reason, at least once. And that’s just my experience. Other people talk at length (and post video proof) of other cooldowns and simple attacks that just fail to register for no apparent reason. Everything from Hog’s hook, to Ashe’s gun (some of the more popular and well-known ones), Hammond grapples, Doomfist’s entire existence, and the list goes on.

Look I won’t fault the devs for buggy code in what has to be a very complicated game, but Sym’s teleporters is least of their problems for abilities that just randomly fail.

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The developers are nerfing cc across the board because so many ppl on the forums think it’s unfun :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: .

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not true, specially when paired with heroes like Lucio or WB, brig isn’t static, she moves like everyone else and displacement or CC can befall anyone and make her life easier, so it’s not just being 6m away you gotta keep an eye on the brig player at all times which is the kind of agency that a dps hero demands hence why people complain about brig, she’s not a dps, yet she plays or played like one

everything else you listed is debatable however the one thing everyone (but devs) can agree is that her dealing damage to heal is a broken mechanic, her CC pales in comparison with her ability to heal her team while whittling down the enemy, no other support does this or at least not as reliably

mind you brig cannot pocket anyone for any significant amount of time, specially if she’s out of range or simply misses whipshot

in my opinion what brig needs is a rework to inspire, everything else… is extra

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…Fair. I was speaking from personal experience - evidently I’m very biased in this case, given how much Symmetra I play.