I mean, I see quite a lot of Soldiers nowadays. The barrier and healing nerfs of the past months really made his life easier. I seriously fear he might become overtuned with this change…
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I think soldier can appear strong but his primary damage isnt really good enough to hard carry a game like some of the heavy hitters can. You can basically make him null and void with the right support and tanks.
I’m watching Valkia’s stream right now, Soldier in every game and Valkia isn’t even playing Pharah. Btw, it’s GM level.
Soldier has been overlooked at hero selection largely because of his lack of burst damage. Lowering the cool down of the rocket will help his burst damage without greatly increasing his raw DPS. It’s a buff that makes sense for him, and shouldn’t make him feel oppressive.
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Do any of you have the link to the patch notes handy?
Well I’ve not seen Soldier for a long time, actualy. Especialy not in OWL. SOMETIMES in arcade/quickmatch, that’s it. I guess to make him more popular it can’t hurt to buff him a little bit.
At higher tiers he doesn’t have the burst damage he needs - or so they say.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes he does.
I wish they would just put it into play, same for the Mei wall nerf…
Yeah I get that he lacks burst damage. Which means he is less likely to finish a target before it gets to safety, and he isn’t as good as burst heroes in terms killing a target through healing.
And that’s exactly why I pointed to the barriers and heals nerfs. Imo Soldier is actually one of the biggest winners of these past months without getting changed himself.
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No, but this will force him to be meta for a few weeks until he gets banned.
I would rather have seen him get a shorter CD but with reduced damage per rocket, so he’d have more frequent access to burst damage, allowing him to finish kills through enemy healing. But his overall damage output would be roughly the same.
I’m not even sure he needs that though anymore. At this point I’d prefer to see others nerfed before anyone is buffed.
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In concept, the recent changes to other aspects of the game do seem to favor Soldier: 76. That said, whether Rein’s shield has 2000 health or 1600 health, that’s still more than Soldier: 76’s health of 200 by a factor so large that the exact maximum barrier health becomes irrelevant in most practical contexts. The bottom line is that Soldier can’t break that barrier faster than someone on the other side of that barrier can kill Soldier. Now, pair that with the fact that Reinhardt now moves much faster while holding his shield up, and you’ll start to see how little the tank changes actually benefited Soldier. He’s now less able to outmaneuver an opposing Reinhardt, whose shield is still just as effective against Soldier when it really matters.
Also consider changes the nerf to Doomfist’s punch charge rate. That should, in concept, really help Soldier: 76 by giving a bit more time for Soldier to kill Doomfist before getting punched. In practice, all it means is that Doomfist players will hide behind a wall a bit longer before sliding off of it and killing Soldier anyway, presenting a target for the exact same length of time. In the end, giving other heroes nerfs doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be less effective against Soldier when it matters.
A buff to Soldier’s rocket cooldown will have a much larger effect on the power put into a Soldier player’s hands than tweaking the health of the barriers completely preventing him from doing damage, because the Soldier player rather than his target is in control of that cooldown. It’s something that will increase Soldier’s ability to consistently deal damage in the small amounts of time when he can actually get an angle without a barrier in front of his target, which is where he has truly needed the help all this time.
Breaking barriers is simply not an effective strategy unless your own team also has a barrier to stand behind. Just look at Bastion for all the confirmation you need for that idea.
Look man I don’t know why you try to over-complicate the question :
As I said earlier, burst heroes are played a lot for a simple reason, they give less time to react to their target and its allies, what form does those “reactions” take ?
- the target hides
- the target gets protected
- the target gets healed
It’s a fact that barrier uptimes have never been as low, heals have also been reduced by a notable margin.
First, burst heroes aren’t impacted by the heal changes as their job was to kill through healing in the first place.
Second, less barrier uptime and less overall protection has a lot more positive impact for sustained damage heroes as “last second saves” are less likely to happen.
Also, sustained damage heroes are usually better barrier breakers by design, so they can create their own openings.
Reality is that it does give you 0.4s more to react and get out of the way while DF shouts stupidly behind his wall. I get that the issue is that you can’t do anything to get out of the way. But regardless that’s a definite buff for all heroes who can get out of the way.
And don’t get me started on DF, I hate that hero design. It outright sucks the fun out of this game.
Imo this “small amount of time” has become big enough for Soldier to not need this buff.
That’s a cheap comparison, Bastion needs his whole team to work for him in order to hope getting value. And teamwork is one of the hardest ressources to find in OW on ladder. Also, Bastion is by far the worst hero in the game whatever his role may be he won’t work.