Poll with limited choices and loaded answer. With a small sample size asking a biased group of players. Worthless data.
Game should never be balanced round the opinion of a hero main simple as.
You may consider this opinion toxic cause it’s nice to gaslight like that. I’d consider a hero being balanced on the opinion of a brigmain Reddit uninclusive and unfair to the rest of the player base in general. Some would call that toxic.
Ps. Asking brig to be more tanky is asking for her to do more dps and heals.
Except in OW2 these distinctions are not made. And so Brig and Rein will only have ever so slightly different kits to achieve the exact same result. I don’t want Smash Bros Echo fighters in my Hero roster thanks when we lose an actually unique hero to do it.
So we remove a bunch of her healing. Cool.
So the solution is. her place is in not dying.
Well at that point, you may as well pick a backline of Zen Ana, who spam their cooldowns and healing out until they die. Because if you’re going to die, getting value before it happens is key. And living but getting no value is useless.
Healing is better than no healing. But large quick bursts of value then dying is far more beneficial than a slow trickle of value.
There is no place for tanky brig. It is a skill-less pointless husk of a hero.
Inspire? Easy af to trigger, press W + M1, you have the stats to live after all.
Shield management? Well on a tanky hero you’d think this would be buffed to make her more survivable meaning it’s stupidly easy to use.
Mechanics? Whipshot? I guess?
Repair pack? Literally still as skillful since you need to manage them correctly, except you just get flatout less value for it.
Shield bash? Less risk since you have the stats to just simply survive lunging your self at an enemy.
Literally 2 things in the kit take skill. Whipshot and repair pack.
Whereas a squishier brig actually has to y’know. Think.
Do I risk using this shield bash?
Does using my whipshot to trigger inspire leave me vulnerable?
managing my shield is important because it actually has a risk of breaking.
Positioning correctly to ensure these things dont happen means something.
When she has value that she can engage with, the hero is more skillful. When it boils down to: lol I just live longer than you because my numbers are higher. Brig is skill-less and when balanced in that way is ultimately a pointless hero as she doesn’t actually achieve anything another support cannot.
brig is already really tanky for a support hero. Because she is a support hero. Not a tank. Go play Reinhardt if you want that sustain.
I’m just giving out ideas, chill. I actually wanted Overwatch to become more of a skill-based, twitch shooter since I used to main tracer whom I loved using. But that doesn’t mean I become ignorant to other routes the game could take. Blizzard is already heading towards the skill-based shooter route anyway so no need to worry about my “horrible” idea.
There just isn’t a solution to the Brig dilemma. Because what the Brig mains in this poll have voted on have voted on her being tankier. They haven’t voted on removing her utility.
But that is what would happen should she go this route and it frustrated me to no end that they cannot seem to understand this and go all nostalgic over pre-2-2-2 brig as if she was a fine hero.
Brig would definitely need to have a different set of weakness if she were to become more like a paladin/tanky support. Adding to that, Blizzard would need to first playtest to see if this ‘tanky’ brig even works and is fun to play while not ruining the experience of other roles.
Regardless, I don’t even know why I’m trying to come up with new ideas when I’m pretty sure Blizzard already has a vision of how they want their new balanced to be.
We can only refer to the material we have already seen, but so far it doesn’t seem as if they have any major reworks planned to make Off-Tanks work more like Main Tanks.
For example the changes to D.Va and Zarya are rather minimal.
Shield Bash and Whip Shot both are peel abilities - which Reinhardt completely lacks.
Those would also be the abilities that define Brigs playstyle the most, so I wouldn’t be worried, that she randomly turns into a 2nd Reinhardt.
I understand that Brig isn’t nearly as tank as she used to be, but even as someone who doesn’t play a ton of Brig (only when I need the extra beef and bodyguard kit), I tend to not die constantly. She’s still really hard to kill played around a team.
Edit: I mean honestly people still pick brig for extra survivability, because all things considered she will survive dive and rush a lot better than most support.
i always thought of like, a 7v7 which would mean like, an extra role. 2-2-2-1 which would be 2 tank, 2 dps, 2 support, 1 hybrid. so let’s say that brig before rq (500 barrier state) was reimplemented however is instead in the hybrid role. however i know how much of an impact it can have on the game lol
How does a solo tank brig push though.
She uses her shield (presumable buffed) to push in (like rein)
Then if she is a threat, she needs good damage, and so her primary damage is buffed (like Rein’s).
So now we have a brig with good shield and good damage, but better utility than Rein. So now, we nerf the utility because it’s too strong and Rein can’t compete. Why does Brig with her good shield and damage get a stun and knockback when Rein just gets a couple of projectiles and a charge.
And so they end up being more similar through balance and the way their kits are structured as Brig’s shield bash is turned into a charge with less risk and less reward and her whipshot becomes a weaker knockback.
Biggest issues I see with this is that the hybrid role would be a jack of 2 trades master of neither and so ends up being either OP cus its the master of both, or bad because it cant be the master of either.
She would if she was a tank. Which I am arguing against. I would rather lose the stun than become a tank to keep it. No point.
well yeah, that’s why i said that it can lead to it being too much. i like the idea of it though, a hero that’s a hybrid that’s not in one specific role. the new heroes would 100% break the game if added though
When I read players want brig to be more tanky I’m assuming what they’re really saying is they want to be more of a brawler/dps. A huge problem with release brig was her heal and self sustain coupled with her ability to shield herself while self healing meant she was essentially self sufficient in duels and could 1v1 the vast majority of the cast.
If brig went the way of a brawler they’d need to entirely rework her to remove healing and I just don’t think that’s what the design team intended for her.
I think a hybrid hero done right, is Brig right now. You can see the tank elements, you can feel them. But primarily she is a support.
Much like how Zen is a support with capacity to deal damage.
I think hybrids that are the best of both cannot exist as many seem to want unfortunately
She doesn’t need either of those buffs to work as a Tank.
To make it work like Reins Shield they would have to make it much larger in size.
If they simply keep it small it will never work the same way Reins Shield does - no matter how much HP they slap onto it.
She could use her Shield to move in and then use her CC to disrupt the enemy team and set up kills for her DPS teammates.
That way she neither needs Reinhardt’s Shield, nor his damage and plays in a completely different way.
The poll makes a distinction between a DPS-orientated Brig and a tanky/more survivable Brig. Most Brig mains just want to be in melee range with her melee weapon.
The poll, like most polls, has bias in the polling mechanism. It would not pass any kind of scientific polling standard. The reason I say this is because it hints at what subcategory of answer we should give. Dps (new brig), mid range (current brig), tanky brig (implied old brig), main healer brig (other). The vast majority of brig players will pick old brig because that was when she was at her peak power.
If you asked those same players if they wanted brig to lose all healing and be reworked into a tank you’d likely get very different responses. Brig can’t have both high levels of personal sustain and defenses to allow her to duel better than the majority of the cast. If she’s more tanky that’s inherently moving her away from a support which is the exact opposite as to the direction the dev team seems to want to guide her towards.
Personally I think taking away all self sustain outside of rally and OW2 support passive could be pretty cool for her. This could allow her to have her old 250 hps and maybe slightly buff her shield.
I don’t know why people keep begging for that 50 HP back. You’d trade inspire self-healing for 50 HP that will get chipped down and you need to play around healthpacks or your other support to stay topped off?
Even with the OW2 regen passive, she’d still be worse than Ana (nade), Zen (shield HP), Mercy (way better passive/native regen), Lucio (crossfade), and Moira (orb). Chipping Brigitte down with flankers would be even easier if she’s not playing with her partner in the backline, which makes her even less suited for “playing in the front line” as most Brig mains insist she must be played.
