Yeah the only reason I feel the need to qualify statements like that is because anything other than “Hanzo is OP and needs gutted” is immediately met with claims of bias. Hanzo overshadows my main, however that’s because McCree is bad and has been for quite some time, and even so I still find excuses to play him.
My argument wasn’t that he’s UP because that would be ridiculous. I just think he isn’t a balance issue. He feels overbearing to play into if the player is good, but this is true of most DPS, and he doesn’t dominate pickrates nor is he a must counter if you want to win.
There have been some threads analyzing the state of Overbuff post private profiles, not particularly as it pertains to Hanzo but the logic is consistent from hero to hero.
It will never be a perfect source of data to judge general viability from, but not only is it the best we have (when compared to anecdotes with a sample size of 1 and a community who has always been way off the mark about a specific hero’s viability’s opinion on what that hero should do), it has always historically been very close to the dev’s reportings when they do share, and in addition you can view the trends and how much they (didn’t) change when private profiles were added to the game mid-Season 10. This is because Overbuff is and always has been opt-in, and so the people who care enough to look themselves up will by definition have no scruples about leaving their profile public.
They didn’t, but they did address the most broken parts of his kit. Initially after the rework, the most broken part of his new kit was how he could chain a bodyshot into a storm bodyshot for an ersatz instakill. Since bodyshotting with Hanzo isn’t exactly difficult, this made it very easy to get value out of him. Right now the same combo takes a headshot or a damage boost to take advantage of, which is way more situational (and in the former if you can land headshots on demand you don’t even need Storm).
The nerf to Storm addressed this issue, and it also addressed the issue of it being a oneshot weapon with blue beam.
His projectile speed is often overstated. Mei has a faster and larger projectile with no gravity drop. You definitely still leave a lot up to your opponent’s poor movement at anything past McCree range if you want to get anything near consistent oneshots.
I would also say the undisputed ruler of long range is Widow, for obvious reasons. Hanzo should basically never win that duel at long range, and if he does that’s on the Widow. He is most effective at mid range, although the pool of midrange projectile heroes are very small (arguably a class of one).
As far as Reaper comparison is concerned… he has always been able to do this. Except it was all one instance of extreme burst before which is even more valuable. It didn’t help his viability as Hanzo was even worse than Reaper when he had Scatter. This ability is also gated behind a cooldown, whereas Reaper is always able to reach his 280 DPS provided he’s in range.
All that aside, Reaper frankly isn’t a very good hero, and his lack of flexibility of his ability to actually deal damage is one of the prime reasons why.
Agreed, I think taking an arrow away would have more directly addressed the issue.
Dragonstrike was only ever an effective ult in Season 10 because it was carried by Damage Boost and Grav. Without those things it’s one of the worst ults in the game and basically only good for zoning, even when you consider how fast he gets it. All nerfing Dragons would have done is further tie his viability to Zarya and Mercy without actually addressing the issue.
By contrast, Damage Boost is one of the best support abilities in the game, and Graviton was both the best ult in the game and eating up a lot of Zarya’s power budget. There is more room to tweak those two than a subpar ult, as they were all culpable in the ult combo.
Giving the combo a hard counter was the best way they could have addressed it, in retrospect. Zarya also got a bonus in the balance shift as she’s able to retain high charge easier which results in faster Gravs (which is still one of the best 3 ults in the game even if they don’t result in 6mans all the time).
Hanzo should, in a vacuum, be good against GOATS. He can both oneshot the healers (which is why Widow is a good pick vs. it) and shred the tanks for 10 second ults (which is why Junkrat and Pharah are good picks).
I think the fact that he isn’t meta right now is a testament to how his power is overblown.
I also don’t see why Hanzo “contesting the top DPS” (which isn’t really true anyway) means that he’s a bigger balance issue than the actual top DPS, unless you mean to say that he should be F tier for whatever reason.