Because clearly not enough people are.
There’s an awful lot of pretending going on lately. I’m seeing too many facades that are used to hide the real motivations behind them.
Let’s talk about Brigitte.
If this justification had a single ounce of truth to it, Ana would be the one receiving nerfs.
Ana has maintained a monthly GM pickrate that exceeds 10% since February. Brigitte has yet to break 10% for a monthly GM pickrate this year. This week is the first time Brigitte has averaged 10% for a week this year, and that’s still 1% below Ana’s average for the same interval.
If the objective was to bring supports more in line with each other, Ana would have been given more than a slap on the wrist (-5 healing/shot) while Brigitte gets the hammer. Mathematically speaking, if Brigitte is out of line, then Ana is even more out of line. If Ana is not out of line, then Brigitte cannot be out of line.
If the strength of Brigitte’s 50 armor overheal on flankers was problematic, the simple solution is to have the overheal scale with the maximum health of the hero. This fixes the issue while providing Brigitte enough compensation to maintain viability. The Experimental Card removes the overheal entirely which, while it does completely remove the ability to overheal flankers, it also removes one of the best mitigations to flankers: Armor.
These Brigitte changes obviously are not made for the sake of balancing the support category, nor are they made to address Tracer running around with 200 HP. The developers need to stop pretending they are.
Remember those experimental changes to Moira you tested before? You wisely chose not to push them live, but we all know why those changes were tested. Moira is a counter to flankers. Reducing her damage makes her weaker against flankers. It’s not a coincidence that you tested those changes at the same time you buffed Genji through the roof. It’s also not a coincidence that the Experimental Card now features heavy nerfs to Brigitte, the only other support who counters flankers.
It’s not about balance. You are trying to force another Dive Meta.
Speaking of Genji, let’s talk about him. He’s been a hot topic this week.
First, I would like for people to stop pretending that winrates are effective metrics for hero viability in a game where mirror selections are possible. Yes, I know, it’s hip to hate on Genji. I hate Genji too, and his 58% GM winrate this week is low-hanging fruit just begging to be voiced in a debate.
However, to use that winrate as evidence for an argument is nothing more than a bit of confirmation bias derived from a wildly erratic and unpredictable measure.
Symmetra 2.0 and Torbjorn 1.0 both featured 65% winrates when it was almost unanimous among the Overwatch community that these two heroes were flaming garbage, routinely labeled as “troll-picks” because of how underpowered they were.
Without looking, can you guess which hero has the highest winrate in GM this month? I couldn’t. I never would have guessed this character.
Everyone have their predictions?
It’s Pharah.
It’s not Reinhardt, who was hands-down the best Tank for the majority of that time.
It’s not Ana, who was hands-down the best Support for the majority of that time.
It’s not McCree, who was hands-down the best DPS for the majority of that time.
It’s Pharah.
McCree, the undisputed best DPS hero in the game for the past six months has the lowest GM winrate in the game this month with 49%.
Winrates are not accurate depictions of hero viability. They just aren’t. Stop pretending they are just because they align with your arguments.
But if you think I’m about to sit here and defend Genji, you’ve got another thing coming.
Prior to his buffs, Genji was hovering with approximately a 1.5% GM pickrate. This might sound pretty bad when compared to the pickrate of any Tank or Support (D.Va has the lowest GM pickrate out of all Tanks and Supports with 1.8%) until one considers that the Damage category has more than double the roster competing for the same number of slots on a team. When scaled to account for that, Genji’s previous 1.5% pickrate becomes 3.64% when standardized for Supports and 3.19% when standardized for Tanks.
Moreover, Genji was precisely in the middle of the Damage category in GM pickrates. He was 9th best and 9th worst. Here is the list of DPS characters, organized from highest GM pickrate to lowest GM pickrate in the month prior to his buffs:
- McCree
- Ashe
- Tracer
- Widowmaker
- Echo
- Hanzo
- Torbjorn
- Doomfist
- Genji
- Soldier:76
- Mei
- Junkrat
- Pharah
- Symmetra
- Sombra
- Reaper
- Bastion
Before I go any further with this, I have a question to ask point-blank not only to you, the reader, but also to the developers:
Would you buff Lucio right now?
Right now.
And I don’t mean just a few tweaks or a slight power redistribution. I mean large flat buffs that objectively make Lucio better.
Would you buff him?
You might be wondering why this is relevant, much less important.
Lucio’s monthly GM pickrate right now is 3.34%.
Genji’s monthly GM pickrate immediately before his buff was 3.64% once standardized for supports.
Lucio has the 4th highest GM Support pickrate and the 4th lowest GM Support pickrate. He is directly in the middle of the pack.
Genji had the 9th highest GM DPS pickrate and the 9th lowest GM DPS pickrate. He was directly in the middle of the pack.
If you would not buff Lucio right now, why would you even consider buffing Genji back then? Genji’s buff does not solve anything; it only worsens the problems facing Overwatch.
But.
And that’s a big “but”.
Can we stop pretending that the problem with Genji is Genji’s problem?
It’s too early to tell conclusively from the statistics whether or not Genji is overpowered. I will admit that I have my doubts; there is still a chance that his GM pickrate falls after an initial surge, and he settles around McCree or Ashe.
Is Genji overpowered relative to the rest of the DPS category today? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to tell for certain right now.
But suppose we took the current Genji and placed him in Overwatch as it was two or three years ago. There is no doubt in my mind that he would be insanely overpowered.
Why the difference? The benchmark for what a viable or overpowered DPS is has shifted drastically since then. The bar rose, and it continues to rise with each attempt to make weaker DPS better while the DPS at the top remain unchanged. As a result, some DPS heroes that were mediocre back then recieved buffs only to somehow end up worse today than they started. DPS buffs that would have been unthinkable two or three years ago are now on live servers. And sure, balancing within the DPS category is all fine and dandy; the problem arises when you look at the other roles and realize that the time-to-kill has dropped globally because you’ve cranked the damage up to 11 without also increasing health pools. In some cases, you’ve reduced those health pools in the form of barrier nerfs.
Genji specifically is not the issue here. Damage creep, and developer negligence in addressing it, is. Genji just so happens to be the most recent manifestation of that.
McCree, since season 4, has received almost nothing but net buffs. I’m not saying some of these buffs were not warranted, considering that McCree wasn’t performing particularly well at the time, but these changes over time added up and eventually spilled over to create the overpowered mess we have now. Between season 4 and today, here are the differences in McCree’s kit:
Peacekeeper:
- Minimum damage at maximum falloff range increased from 30% of base to 50% of base.
- Recovery time reduced from 0.5 seconds to 0.42 seconds.
Fan the Hammer:
- Damage increased from 45 to 50.
Combat Roll:
- Cooldown reduced from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.
Flashbang:
- Stunned targets are slowed heavily.
- Stun duration reduced from 0.85 seconds to 0.7 seconds.
Deadeye:
- Targets begin locking on after 0.2 seconds, down from 0.8 seconds.
- Range increased from 70 meters to 200 meters.
- Damage accumulates at a rate of 550 damage/second after locking onto targets for 1.5 seconds, up from 275 damage/second.
- Firing Deadeye no longer locks the player’s aim.
Let’s look at Pharah. Back in season 4, Pharah, while statistically mediocre on PC, was often a subject of debate in hero balance. A thread calling her overpowered was not uncommon on the forums at the time, and while they were typically created by console users, Pharah was still very viable and a force to be reconned with on PC. Since then, Pharah has recieved what is only a net buff to her kit, and yet she is significantly worse off today than she was back in season 4. She is now competeing with heroes such as Mei, Sombra, and Symmetra in GM for lowest pickrates with 0.59%.
Rocket Launcher:
- Recovery time reduced from 0.9 seconds to .75 seconds.
- Enemy-knockback reduced by 20%.
- Self-knockback increased by 25%.
Concussive Blast:
- Cooldown reduced from 12 seconds to 9 seconds.
Rocket Barrage:
- Now reloads Rocket Launcher upon use.
How about Soldier:76? He was the staple DPS in season 4, and today, despite receiving quite a few buffs since then, he currently dwells in the lower end of the DPS pickrate spectrum in GM with 0.89% this month, his closest competitor being Junkrat with 0.86%. The differences between his kit then and today are as follows:
Heavy Pulse Rifle:
- Minimum damage at maximum falloff range increased from 30% of base to 50% of base.
- Number of shots until reaching maximum spread increased from 6 to 9.
Sprint:
- Delay between canceling Sprint and firing weapon reduced from 0.5 seconds to 0.3 seconds.
Helix Rocket:
- Cooldown reduced from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.
Tactical Visor:
- Can target Immortality Field and Rip-Tire.
- No longer affects Helix Rocket.
Genji, has always been at the very least viable since season 4, floating between “mediocre” and “very strong” for the vast majority of his existence. After being meta in season 5, he recieved multiple buffs and one minor nerf (deflect hotbix size) and somehow still ended up floating in the middle of all DPS pickrates. That is, until his recent buffs. Between season 4 and today, here are the changes he has received:
Shuriken:
- Ammo increased from 24 to 30.
- Damage increased from 28 to 30.
Fan of Blades:
- Recovery time reduced from 0.75 seconds to 0.65 seconds.
- Spread reduced from 12 to 9.
Cybernetic Agility:
- Removed attack delay after wall-climbing.
Deflect:
- Hitbox size reduced.
- Duration increased from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds.
- Can now be canceled manually.
Dragonblade:
- Reloads Shurikens upon use.
- Is no longer interrupted by stuns or Hack.
Fixing Genji will not fix damage creep. Genji is not the problem; he is part of it. Damage creep is the problem. Fix damage creep, and fixing Genji will come naturally with that.
