Can you fix the least-picked heroes without reworks?

If you average the pick rates across Comp and QP for this week these are the bottom 5 least picked heroes:

  • Mei (1.29%)
  • Soldier 76 (1.27%)
  • Sombra (1.02%)
  • Torb (0.88%)
  • Bastion (0.70%)

And yes, I’m as surprised as you are that Reaper isn’t in the bottom 5, in QP he’s 3rd from the bottom but is 9th out of 29 on competitive… interesting.

What I want to focus on in this thread is the possibilities of buffing these bottom 5 heroes from obscurity just by altering the values of their abilities. I’d really appreciate that it focuses on that as when reworks come up they become all consuming but rarely lead anywhere, it’s not clear how they really would work or if they’d ever practically be applied. Then after all that distraction people overlook how even small and simple changes could have a huge impact.

Maybe reworks should be eventually considered, but the viability of re-balancing values should be gone over first.

What changes would you make to these heroes without taking away (and replacing) any of these heroes existing abilities? So just tweak their numbers to rise them in popularity across both QP and Comp, or at least get them all out of the sub 1.5% pickrate hell. Bug fixes are obviously included as they’re supposed to be done anyway but what bugs really need to be focused on as a priority and any details of exactly how these bugs appear would make a huge difference.

If you’re adding a whole new ability to where there was nothing before (an example would be giving DVA micro missiles) that’s arguably not a rework, that’s just a buff of getting an ability on a button the hero otherwise didn’t use. Or add a passive ability where they otherwise didn’t have one before.

EDIT 1:

CLICK HERE for my take on importance of Immobility

A common theme is these heroes having some aspect of immobility, Bastion sacrifices mobility for sentry mode. Torb has a turret that is immobile. Mei sacrifices mobility for the heals and immunity of iceblock. Soldier 76 also to an extent sacrifices immobility to use his biotic field, he can move around inside it but for 5 seconds for him to use that field he’s going to be in quite a predictable area.

It seems the devs have underappreciated quite how bad a downside immobility is. Or maybe they did accurately account for it but the game has since changed, the general player-base have become much better at exploiting immobility, movement is more and more important.

Yet you can’t just remove this downside, iceblock, sentry and turrets are rather inherently immobile. You need to increase upsides or reduce other related costs.

5 Likes

not sure for 4 of them, but i’d give soldier’s healing field a change, it’s on a 15 second cooldown and has a terrible radius, i’d say cut the cooldown to 10 seconds, increase the radius, (a lot) increase the duration (maybe 7-8 seconds) and keep the healing, so that it can be a very effective objective stabilization tool. (make him more of the support dps hybrid he was supposed to be)

2 Likes

One thing to consider is that the Cooldown for BF begins the moment the ability is activated. I missed that for ages, there’s no consistency across the heroes on which cooldowns begin immediately after activation and which don’t.

With the current Soldier, when you activate biotic field, as the BF is running, the 15 second cooldown starts from the frame the BF activates. When BF ends, it’s 10 seconds before you can activate BF again.

So if it worked the same way then literally 50% of the game Soldier 76 could have his biotic field up. Or if it was changed to act more like how Winston’s bubble shield works then it would be no net change, Soldier 76 would get would still be able to put down a Biotic field until 10 seconds after the field ends.

increase the radius, (a lot) increase the duration (maybe 7-8 seconds) and keep the healing

Any one of these would be good… but all together they’d make Soldier 76 a de-facto support hero.

Soldier 76’s biotic field being large AND with such high healing over such a long time without making him too much like Lucio or Brig. Especially if cooldown worked the same way, there’d be only a 2 second gap between each Biotic Field being up.

The problem with a longer duration is Soldier is supposed to be a HIGH dps hero with a pretty small clip size, he’s better at shorter sharper bursts but BF fails because too often the healing rate can still be exceeded because the sacrifice of Soldier staying close to the field makes him too predictable.

For example, with 40hp/sec healing rate if soldier is hit by a fully charged hanzo arrow then he’s knocked down to 75hp, in the time it takes for Hanzo to shoot another fully charged arrow at Soldier then 40hp/sec will have healed Soldier to only 123hp… Biotic field is worthless if the Hanzo is (not unreasonably) firing at maximum rate. Soldier 76 is dead either way from the same body shots.

Healing at 50hp/sec and in the time a Hanzo fully charges another arrow then Soldier has been healed up to 135. Enough to survive.

This means Hanzo needs to get either of the arrows be a headshot when against a Soldier using BF. Or burn a storm arrows still 50hp/sec means soldier will survive even 3 storm arrows hitting in rapid succession.

1 Like

Why is Sym not there? She is one of the least picked heroes

2 Likes

I know, right! :confused:

By my count Symm is at 1.3% pick rate (average of Comp and QP) so juuuust above Mei in popularity. She’s got a 0.79% pickrate in competitive but 1.82% pickrate in Quickplay. So that puts her at number 6 spot.

And there are literally 5 heroes that are picked less than her, so, why not prioritise them first?

I suppose I could weight these percentages by how more people play Quickplay, but that would only increase my measure of Symm’s overall pick-rate.

2 Likes

Sombra now has no spread or falloff, Damage per shot increased to 200, ignores armor
Soldier has 40 ammo damage per shot increased to 20 and max spread reduced by 50%
Mei’s secondary fire no longer has a cast time and delay between shots is reduced from .8 second to .4 seconds
Torb’s primary fire now deals 200 damage
Bastion can headshot and has no spread in sentry

ok ok i’ll try my best to give ideas fix them

Mei: I think her ult should have more range or dmg output becouse the enemy can easly leave the radious of blizzard of if they get freeze most of them won’t die

Soldier: I think he needs a little bit more ammo to be paired with the other hitscans like mccree or ashe. I also think he needs some buff in BF to heal up quicker or more consistant

Sombra: Probably dmg buff giving her more opportunities and do more dmg per sec than dva (yeah a tank does more damage than a “DPS”). Not something huge though. Just from 8 to 10-12 idk. Also fix her bugs especially on hack, or hacks through walls or doesn’t hack in 2 sec of the animation. Feels very random

Torb: Ummmmm I think molten core should be even better. For not say it has a bug where the 1st hit does 2dmg lmao

Bastion: Probably be less depending on the team but idk how and i think the only way to fix him is definitely a rework. The only thing i can think of when just buff not rework will be a better selfheal

Mei only need bug fixes.

I’m surprised Soldier has a lower pickrate than Reaper, but maybe this is because Reaper is stronger in a tank meta than Soldier.

Soldier: Ult should give unlimited ammo/no reload; maybe give his bullets slightly more damage against shields, if the ult change isn’t enough.

Mei: nothing,. People just don’t know how to play with her, but she can be very powerful as is.

Sombra: give her more damage against hacked targets. This would make her super OP for highly coordinated teams, but it would be a fair buff for most elos.

Torb: let him make tunnels and bunkers; he should have a variety of turrets he could choose to build: healing turret, smokescreen turret, etc., be creative.

Bastion: just delete. I dislike his whole concept. He’s the most toxic hero to play against bc he just sits there pumping out insane damage for little to no strategy or skill. I do like that he is fascinated by and affectionate to the bird, but that’s not really relevant!

Symm just got changes and this could easily revert once people adjust to her tick rate and realize it isn’t meta changing.

I like that idea.

My ideas:

MEI

The Cooldown on Mei’s cryo-freeze now begins as soon as the ability is activated

This is a buff that increases Mei’s healing and suitability but doesn’t affect the viability of the tactic of using cryo-freeze just for an instant to avoid things like CC abilities.

This needs a buff because the immobility of cry-freeze is a very serious downside, you need to be constantly moving or else your opponents will be moving against you.

The healing rate also needs to be much higher, healing at only 37.5hp/sec is bad enough but only being able to do it while completely immobile slows down the pace that Mei can engage too much. A moderate 20% increase makes a huge difference.

Along with the cooldown changes, Mei heals at a 60% higher rate on average, giving her much more sustain which she needs considering she’s only ever any good as a close quarters DPS. If all you’re going to do is snipe you might as well play as Ashe.

SOLDIER 76

Soldier now has 33% shorter cooldown on Biotic field but 1 second shorter duration of healing

Similar boat as Mei with having to give up mobility to heal, though he can still move around inside the field to be a hard target. But at least he doesn’t have the problem of the cooldown beginning only when BF ends. BF heals a lot but it takes too long and it’s too infrequent, which isn’t useful for self-sustain, you can’t let yourself get as low as 1hp then heal the full 200, you have to effectively waste healing by using it whenever down to 120hp or lower as there’s so many things that deal 120 damage and can kill you instantly.

This has synergy with the new spread recovery on his rifle which means he since his last accuracy spread buff he can accurately shoot a whole clip in much less than 5 seconds, yet 5 seconds isn’t long enough for him to dump a mag, reload, and fire more than 6 shots.

This means if Soldier 76 eats a grenade or sniper body shot or phara rocket spam he doesn’t have to take himself out of the game for up to 20 seconds waiting for a cooldown, applying it, and then returning.

Helix rockets now have 75% more knockback

Helix rockets were good in 2016 but now Ashe is here with a coach gun which grants her such insane mobility at no cost to self-damage. Soldier 76 is obviously being dumped for how good coach gun is in comparison. Knockback needs to be way higher, 50% to 100% higher. Enough to seriously juggle enemies.

TORB

Despite all the reworks here he is languishing at second to dead last, in large part because of how immobile his turret is. The 10 second cooldown if it’s destroyed while in combat doesn’t sound long, but when you factor the 3 second build time it’s not good enough, Torb isn’t really able to use his turrets anywhere near as much as he needs.

Cooldown before another turret can be placed down is now always only 8 seconds
Once landing on a flat surface, turrets build in 2 seconds rather than 3

This is nice and consistent, it’s the same cooldown cycle as Orisa’s shield, no more inconsistent cooldowns based on if it’s been in combat or not. The most important turret use is going to be putting down another one when yours has been destroyed in combat so this will be a net buff, the 5 second cooldown was mostly worthless as why would you deploy a turret then within 5-7 second and it not shooting anyone need to redeploy it?

The turret is inevitably disposable yet needs to be quickly moved.

Sombra - clip size increased by 33% and spread decreased by 33%, possibly also damage dropoff starts 5m further away.

Right now, Sombra is nearly worthless unless she is actively hacking someone or using EMP. This will make her a bit more of an asset in a teamfight once those abilities are on cooldown. In particular, the spread reduction and better ranged damage means she can fight at a bit longer of distance, meaning she can stay in the fight longer before translocating away.

Did you notice that all of those heroes are Damage heroes?

Damage heroes have a much tougher competition for pick rates. Their pick rates will always be “low.”

It’s super wierd to me that Soldier became so low all of a sudden. He’s not really bad

wait so sym isnt in the bottom five? it’s a miracle.

(shes probabaly sixth though)

Post-buff Hanzo took over his niche and now Ashe has taken what’s left.

2 Likes

I was actually thinking of this myself the other day, if their scared to buff his dps because he becomes a must pick, why not try buffing his healing instead? Increasing the radius would make him an interesting choice for team fighting.

Yeah soldier doesn’t need to be made any more powerful, what needs to be pushed is his flexibility, leave his core damage capability where it is and improve the application of his healing and his mobility.

Is this just GM or something? I’ve been seeing Mei loads recently on console.