Alright. So I got to play against numerous Master tracers/Genjis today. Here is what I found.
Tracer has simply learned what distance to keep from Brigitte. Tracer is like a honey badger, it takes what it wants, honey badger don’t care. Brigitte cant normally catch a master tracer because of range issues. Tracer just still keeps her distance and only goes in for a pulse bomb. Simple as that. Brigitte spends most of her time chasing down tracer or trying to cut her off. Which is counter productive if too much time is spent doing it. Brig has to choose what role to play, Peel, or frontline aggressive. But you cant just let a master tracer run around doing what it wants.
Grandmaster Genji. Brings his own healer. Unless your team is focused on him when he tries anything at all, your team is dead. Simple as that. Brigitte cant do enough damage to phase an armored Genji who is getting healed across an area by a perfect aiming ana. She can stun him (If the player manages to even land one), but that’s about it for Brigs role. If he didn’t die during the stun, guess what happens next?
The prob is this. Brig seems to be a soft counter, not a hard counter. If she can catch them, then she can try and help kill them. But when it comes to armored healing tracer/genjis, You must have others focusing them hard. But that’s hard to do when they also need to play their roles. Brig seems to be a waste of space unless played as an aggressive front-line support role. But then who is supposed to counter tracer/genji dives?
What has your experience been?
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My experience as a GM Tracer is that Brigitte doesn’t counter me. She’s like Pharah, it’s just not my job to solo kill her, but I have an easy time securing kills on her alongside my team.
If I get shield bashed I massively messed up and deserve the death. She has no way to close the gap, it’s very easy to tell when it is on cooldown (which it usually is, as it’s her only form of mobility), and she’s a front line hero which is precisely where I don’t roam around as Tracer.
Then when you consider how powerful the synergy between Brigitte and Tracer (if you use every repair pack to just keep Tracer overhealed she becomes immortal), I honestly think that Brigitte has only served to help Tracer.
I think she fairs better against Genji. Negating deflect is a big deal.
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Thats exactly how I felt! Thank you for confirming this. So basically, did Daddy Jeff accidentally beef up high skill tracer/genjis by adding another mccree who is supposed to help counter but cant but instead can make his counters more powerful?
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Honestly, I think that Brigitte is there to serve as an option for medium tier players to defend themselves against a stomping Tracer. A great Tracer will struggle to kill you on her own even if you’re mediocre, which allows people an extra option for when they just keep dying as Mercy or Ana or something.
But yeah she’s not going to make Tracer switch off of Tracer. If anything she’s gonna make Reinhardt have to switch.
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I never have a chance to play in that level but I feel like Brigitte is actually enforcing tracer because she gives tracer another reset button with extra armor
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Yea, this hero seems to be a giant mistake and is going to backfire fast if they do not roll out some changes. All this did was hurt Reinhardt while making tracer even stronger. If they do not fix her to be viable against dive in higher skilled tiers, then that means lots of medium tier and lower players just got suckered into buying a gold weapon for a hero that may be crap tier in higher skill levels.
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But like, you think that counter = secure kills. That’s not the case. Simply by tracking her, you put her under pressure. Same as Sombra.
Tracer’s forced to choose to engage, use all her cds to avoid you and potentially die (or succeed) or retreat. That’s how you counter her.
‘potentially’ But in the meantime, she harasses and harasses and works everyone down while nobody can catch her. Can they be caught? Sure. Is it common? Nope.
But like I said before, if Brig spends too much time trying to put pressure on tracer alone, then brig is not helping the front line.
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That’s what I’ve been saying for ages. Her shield bash is not threat to Tracer and her only mean of damaging her (whip thing) can’t two shot her. Basically tracer remains overpowered and without counter.
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Tracer is doing nothing either. And Brig actually helps with her heal. Once you killed Tracer, you can reposition yourself.
All Brigitte has really done is making it so playing tank (any tank from dive to Reinhardt and Roadhog) is even more frustrated. I wouldn’t be surprised if the low/mid tiers will just change into 2-3 Support and 3-4 DPS. I am just an average player but 90% of my play time is tank but the past couple days I have just been instalocking Junkrat. It’s gonna get far worse with the Mei/Reaper changes.
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I have killed a lot of tracers. But Master tracers have learned how to play around Brigitte. All of a sudden Brigitte seems worthless as a soft counter to divers. Hell, catching a master tracer coming in to pulse bomb seems near to impossible still even with Brigitte. You have to completely predict it way ahead of time and know where they will be diving in and when they will be. Seems nearly unrealistic to think Brig is a tracer counter in high skilled games.
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Was she meant to hard-counter them, though?
From her underlying design (shield bash, whip-shot has travel time for boop, melee attack to heal team) it seems to me that she’s meant to be a secondary support strong in scenarios where slow enemies have easy tells on slow abilities.
Stuff like Reinhardt’s charge, McCree’s or Moira’s ults, those things. You can either abort them, or boop them out of position. You also have a shield for some direct protection, and they’re overall really bad at avoiding you once you engage so you can heal.
She’s terrible against either heroes who can trivially avoid her (like Tracer, Genji, Pharah, etc), or those who have nothing meaningful she can easily abort.
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Everyone has been crapping on about how she was gonna put her down. Or “oh no they’ve needed her animation cancel now she can’t kill Tracer”. She never could to begin with
I highly disagree. Genji and Tracer are forced to enter Brigitte’s range if they wanna dps. I have lots of fun rekting flankers.
Pharah tho, is different. She’s long range.
I agree with this. I think the community assumes she was supposed to be a counter to them, but in no way was she meant to counter them…
This has been a big mistake and it’s true, she counters frontline more than anything.
A good tracer will never get into shield bash range yes, but if you sit around where she’ll be vulnerable to your one shot, it’s still counterable.
I find Genji doesn’t get countered by her as much cause of his jumping mobility, but Tracer? Yes.
After fighting against master tracer/genjis, I sort of disagree on some things. Tracer can still kill people while keeping range from brigitte including brigitte herself.
Genji does indeed have to dive in, but it’s normally a con at first just to waste your CC before he ults (while being healed up) to simply ult your team. Baiting Brigs CC is all he has to do. But does he need to? After playing against a grand master geni and a couple masters, no. Half the time the ulted genjis who got stunned still did not die despite people following up. Unless you roll a mccree who can follow up with a stun after yours, it’s a nightmare.
She still can…
Shield Bash + Melee + Whip Shot does 155 damage within 1 second (Bash’s stun time).
Before, she could cancel melee animation with another melee, being able to strike 3-4 attacks at once.
So is this what the Overwatch team intended? To add a frontline counter who in turn also buffs tracer/genji?