As I sit here and watch OWL, I’m beginning to have my doubts. Seeing double shield being countered by a Winston/Zarya based dive fairly often. The pros may have figured something out.
Maybe the adjustments to double shield characters don’t need to be so extreme to make other comps viable against them.
Food for thought.
(The Roadhog changes are popular I hear.)
All the changes besides Orisa/Sigma/Brig seem fine.
Although if they are going that direction with Orisa/Sigma, they might as well just make barriers less of a requirement.
The game exists outside of OWL. OWL is its own separate beast because of communication and coordination that are functionally impossible on ladder (even in a GM game with 6 random OWL players playing together you would not get that). In actual games double shield is king and Sigma rules the kingdom. I would not worry though as neither Sigma nor Brigg will lose pickrate after the patch goes through. They will still be top tier meta.
Also, though not relevant, the double shield comp (both SFS and probably Fusion as well) won their matches (or will win soon). Again though not really relevant.
I love that changes, it opens the game up
It’s the nature of the beast
Ana is niche in OWL, but strong on Ladder = Ana is OP
Baptiste is trash on ladder, but strong in OWL = Baptiste is OP
It won’t even solve the problem. We’ll just get Rein/Sigma instead.
He is not niche on ladder. He is one of only 3 supports picked right now and the only support whose rate rivals Ana and Brigg. Basically you are picking Ana Brigg or Bap and that accounts for about 80% of the support picks.
I’d submit a third case that mudding the water:
Brigitte is strong in OWL, strong in GM/M, but a throw pick everywhere else: Brigitte is called OP by pros and creators, which confuses 95% of the player base. 
Uhh outside of GM, Baptiste is one of the weakest heroes in the game?
Less than 1% of the playerbase, and Baptiste is STILL below the average for the rank in terms of winrate to pickrate
I dont think OWL has the genji nerfs yet
Outside of GM you can literally pick whatever you want because you have a balanced game. Hero choice does not really matter outside of GM (it kinda does in Masters but Masters is a unique league as it pertains to OW as a whole), so if the goal is to balance around lower leagues we would have stopped balance patches a year ago.
I would think they would. Shouldn’t they be getting them the week after the week they go live which would be this week?
They also figured out how to counter dive just before brig was launched but we still got her. Put the changes through I want OP hog
Except in Masters as well, Baptiste has a 47% winrate too?
And even in GM, there are only 9 heroes with lower winrates than Baptiste as well
He’s not strong ANYWHERE except in OWL, which only has around 200 players
He is S-tier in GM and A-tier in Masters. Generally in GM you pick the best heroes to win the games. However, I could literally tell that he was highly picked in Masters without looking because if he wasnt you would have used that number instead of win rate.
Masters is a very weird league though and I would advise against trying to figure out meta trends from for reasons that I will gladly explain if you want.
In Masters, Ana, Brig, and Mercy are used more than Baptiste
He sits at a 3.31% pickrate with his 47% winrate; Mercy who is used 4.18% has a 54% winrate and Moira who is used with a 2.98% and a 51% winrate
I don’t care that less than 1% of the playerbase uses him, he’s still well, well, WELL, below average for almost every single person playing this game who isn’t in the OWL
If we decided to do balance patches ONLY to balance the game around the lower leagues then there would never be another balance patch because it would be done. The game would be balanced and the team could go do other things because below GM the game is balanced and it was balanced last week, last month, and last year and will almost certainly continue to be in the future. There have only been a small handful of times where the game was ever in such a state that you could call it imbalanced int he lower tiers. As such balance around GM because that is the only league where the imbalance exists and you can keep an eye on the lower leagues to avoid change that would break them.
Also data for Masters is useless. I cannot be kind about this because it is a simple concept. Masters is a league unlike any other in OW because it has factors that make it unique. Trying to draw data from it therefore is a rather large waste of time. When people call Masters the worst league in OW, they are saying that because of the factors that make it unique.
I think many of agree that balancing around the top levels of play is good, but they do need to keep in mind the impact to the rest of the game. Nerfing a hero to lower their viability in OWL is just fine, unless that means the character is useless everywhere else.
Still, my original question stands: do we need such significant changes to double shield heroes if the pros have already identified counter comps?
Imagine actually thinking this.
The thing that makes Winston/Zarya viable (even though I think it lost every time it was played today and sole victory was 1 map out of 3 in a KotH) is that it requires coordination that is not possible outside of OWL. You can try it on ladder, and it is not terrible and I have noticed a lot more Winston lately, but it is not a counter comp. It is more of a map/point specific comp that can occasionally keep up (except on Gibralter where Dive will always win).
For all the “significance” of these changes it will not change the meta. The meta will STILL be double shield and the 3 viable supports on ladder will still be Bap, Ana, and Brigg. The meta tank will still be Sigma and he will just be paired with Rein instead of Orisa. The changes are largely the normal Blizzard style changes in which they do not touch anything that makes the hero over/under powered and instead make pointless changes that do not shift anything.