I know that every new hero upon release has needed tweaks (or still needs some in Ana-banana’s case) in some shape or form in order to reach their ‘balanced’ state, but let me pose an observation I’ve made about the perception of balance for Brigitte in relation to the 2nd most recent hero - Moira.
What I mean is - is Brigitte getting the Moira treatment in terms of community reactions? Let me explain.
Moira: Upon release the forums and in-game chat alike were on fire about how broken op she was being able to heal a whole team of tanks, deal 100dps in a quick combo in 1v1 scenarios and pick off supports and bully flankers alike with the best escape in the game. I recall making posts concerning Moira’s balance mere weeks prior to Brigitte’s debut talking about these things and how she also had unique limitations to her healing capacity - namely her healing resource bar and how D.va gobbles up her very useful healing orb on demand (as we know at the time D.va was very prevalent.)
Once Brigitte was released though (as I anticipated) all of that vitriol evaporated towards Moira because the masses had finally come to realize how to deal with Moira in an organized setting over the comp seasons, and no longer cited QP and initial comp pickrates as reason for her being ‘op’ as people were often doing in the wake of the garbage fire that was the Mercy meta (wherein pickrates were a big factor in people’s argumentation and to some degree still are today).
Brigitte is where Moira was when I first took to the forums midway through Moira’s debut season into comp, that state being where people are still adapting to her quite frankly meta disrupting capabilities - unlike Moira who (while providing a new healer) didn’t really define any seismic meta shifts. While I will not say Brigitte is not without her imbalances, I don’t think giving her a Doomfist-tier nerf hammer is the answer to our problems like the forums seem to think she needs - otherwise we’ll be back to the endless dive meta some people were tiring of so short a time ago.
No, I think people still just need more time to utilize her counters; and to some degree, they already have in my ranked games. Will I instalock Brig in many games? Yeah, I like her playstyle and she’s a new force in comp, why not? Will I stay on her against a Junkrat, double sniper, or Pharah when we lack hitscan? No. Because those heroes tend to absolutely brutalize her effectiveness. And just like Moira she has her own limitations: her heal having travel time and a considerable cooldown or needing the condition of melee strikes in order to even trigger, her dps being entirely reliant on the enemy team walking into her or ignoring her combo vulnerability or cooldowns, etc.
Tl;dr: I think new heroes need to have found their place in the competitive scene in order to be properly deliberated upon in terms of balance, rather than us showing an unwillingness to adapt nor experiment to try and work around new introductions to comp. Yes, Brigitte still needs some fine tuning, but not an entire rework like some forum posts might recommend.
P.S: I’m not citing OWL for evidence of balance simply due to the fact OWL is a whoooole different beast to ladder.
