The recent patches on the PTR are a mixed bag, but they’re mostly awesome changes. I was wondering why they left my boy Soldier: 76 untouched, though. He’s been and has been feeling really overshadowed by other DPS for quite a while, too. One or two simple changes would fix that:
Allow him to reload while activating Sprint. He could use the extra mobility while reloading his weapon for the next teamfight/reposition himself quickly. It could mean life or death for him to just walk while reloading knowing there’s an enemy ready to finish him off.
And/or:
Increase ammo size to 35. Bastion’s Recon Mode’s weapon has nearly identical stats to Heavy Pulse Rifle, yet he has 35 ammo. Why not Soldier? In addition, this would strengthen Tactical Visor, enabling him to pump out more damage during those 6 seconds.
These changes would make him feel a lot more refined and otherwise more smoother to play as. Let’s fix our Soldier Boi.
Soldier doesn’t need buffs. As dumb as that sounds, ik how you feel. But he’s literally the strongest version of soldier we’ve ever had and he still isn’t meta purely because power creep. Blizz needs to get barriers under control and burst healing reduced if they ever wanna see soldier playable again. They could literally make it so he gets visor 50% faster and let it headshot and he’d still be garbage right now just because every possible meta we could have right now is a counter to him (because orisa counters him lol)
I’ll admit, that has some truth to it, but as far as we know, even if the OP Heroes have some slight nerf, they’re still going to be picked a lot. Soldier’s been kinda behind all of them, sadly.
There is no Meta that would help soldier. Tbh. only reason soldier every was meta in the very early seasons was because people have not really gotten a hang of other heroes.
Not saying soldier is easy, but he was the easiest to get to a decent skill lvl (since he could be played like an army of one), actually “mastering” him is arguably harder with soldier than any other hero.
The issue right now is that he is not only not meta, but also nearly unplayable. They wont nerf half the cast, devs go the way of least resistance and its easier to buff the worst hero in the game a little to make him barely playable rather than rebalance the entire game.
For example cree needed 18% dps buff to be barely playable. His dps is equal to soldiers, yet he has no spread. To make it fair you would have to undo this buff. But this wouldnt result in soldier getting played, it would result in soldier and cree beeing nearly unplayable. So you need to nerf about 15 more heroes and then soldier and cree are playable again, but everything else is broken because there is no way they can change 15 heroes at once and get the balancing even remotely right.
*peaked 4.3k in S17 on a soldier onetrick acc and now having fun not playing the game anymore since even playing soldier on a 3.2k smurf acc is not even remotely fun.
I am upset that jr didn’t get any buffs either… soldier is definitely an underwhelming character. I am trying to think of some things call of duty had added that might help soldier.
Reload while aiming down sights: would help Ashe
Each kill reduced cooldowns: could allow for chain helix
Claymores: Let soldier place destructible claymores down as his secondary weapon just enough damage to delete tracer. Regenerates every minute or after he dies.
I’m no fan of Blizzard’s continued slow balance practice, in fact I think it’s killing this game, but I think this patch actually indirectly buffs Solider.
There’s several nerfs to barrier up time in combination of cool downs on abilities and barrier recharge rate which only help him.
Thats genius,
because how it is now its usually both sides getting healed and soldier just having a hard time killing anything (50% accuracy is relatively high for soldier against small targets, thats 90 dps then, plus having to fire in bursts more like 80 dps, even a zen orb alone would leave you with only 50 dps so it takes 4 seconds to kill someone)
But it shouldnt influence his healing field, otherwise he is useless in duels. (Yes he is technically stronger than tracer, genji, etc… in duels, but he has to stay his ground and they can get away if its not in their favor - so he has to be more capable with all his cds up)
Eh, I think we’re used to hip-firing with Soldier at this point. Ability cooldown reduction should be an Ability for a future Hero. And claymores? I’m content with Helix Rockets for burst-damage.
I didn’t know what you said, but ok.
Snipers do need some adjusting.
I’m honestly a bit confused by it, but I think it makes sense?
You’re right. Reloading while Sprint is active would also help him, but it’s more of a QoL change for me.
I don’t get all the powercreep complaints, this has gone on for so long that a few years’ worth of characters have been added to match the creeped state of the game. Stopping powercreep by nerfing 3/4ths of the roster is not a viable solution.
play team death match and you will find how powerful soldier is … the only thing which is in his way is the double barriers, if there were no double barriers a lot of people might even ask for a nerf … i think also the sniper damage is a bit insane
