you said a lot of wise things which I agree with and a lot of things that don’t relate to your points nor the subject in my opinion. regarding some of the comments here, yes, I do believe that skill is a legitimate factor when it comes to hero’s strength, especially if the skill pool involves aim in it and not only mechanical skill, as OW is labeled as fps game. balancing should follow the GMs and pros, because they show how the game can be played to it’s full extent, and in terms of competitive play we should all try our best to learn from them. heroes aren’t being nerfed or buffed exclusively by their pickrates, but rather on their possible performance and extent of gameplay executions, brig in that regard for example, has a strong aoe healing which is easier to get value from than ana’s healing once you’re good enough, and I’m not stating that brig requires no skill. add armor on top of that and you get balancing issues. I don’t believe the nerfs will go through however, I think armor will be tweaked to the max hp of the target in the end. powercreep is a true problem of the game tough as you mentioned.
I totally agree with you there, they are far too focused on Overwatch leauge and GM players who represent probably 5-10% of the overall players and even less when OW2 drops.
Wow… that was a read. Good analysis. Pretty darn accurate.
The Damage creep was actually enforcing Goats in some way…
We always had Tanks that could do a lot of Damage and Brig/Moira existed during the Ends of Dive as well… A tank Meta started to form when Mercy was clipped and Ana was the go-to Main healer again… then Slambulance became a thing which finally lead to Goats. The meta held itself through Team coordination and play very well untill 2/2/2.
In 2/2/2 Many characters were rebalanced… DPS got big buffs and Tanks/Supports got nerfed… yet when Open Queue now happened the Meta once again Defaulted to Goats.
The only reason I could see this happening is the amount of Damage Creep… specifically burst Damage.
Why run a squishy Damage hero when you can run a bulky tank with the only Drawback being a bit lower Damage output. while being able to survive most burst sources and stay in the fight. Nerfing Barriers and now Brig actually makes Damage Heroes even LESS survivable and with that LESS favorable in the meta with MORE reliance on them chunky health pools to stay in the fight (Remember: Dying in OW is the worst thing you can do)
Quite Frankly… I believe that we would be able to see Damage heroes again… if we dealt with the Burst Powercreep… and generally brining the speed of the game back down so the meta doesn’t have to force it to slow again.
You won’t convince people who still pretend Genji was on par with Bastion, Symmetra, Sombra, for usefulness.
They remain, and will remain, convinced that even with him closing on a 7% pick rate in GM that he is merely “playable.“
Brig top WR at every rank
Ana WR slowly climbs up across the rank
They aren’t similar, Brig is too powerful and universally applicable
I disagree how they tackle Brig, I disagree how they handle supports
I’m probably late to the discussion and things I wanna say were probably said in 160 which I don’t wanna read cuz it’ll take a lot of time, but I just wanna say it cuz why not.
Yes, and winrates mostly show how a hero performs against a team without that hero.
That’s why estimating winrate should be done in line with pickrate. Heroes like Sym, Junk, Bastion have a pathetically low pickrate but maintaining high win rate because they are almost exclusively picked in a scenarios where they have a huge advantage. Heroes like Ashe, Genji or Hanzo are more universal and can fit in a lot of team compositions and maps. So if a hero is maintaining both high pickrate and winrate, they’re strong. If a hero has a crazy winrate but low pickrate, they’re niche.
Actually pharmercy was a popular strategy even in OWL for some fist points. It abuses a possible lack of counters and defending team’s inability to quickly respond.
And also, regarding power creep, that’s a lot of things. Damage power creep is present, but what’s really significant, is healing power creep. The initial game balance, the release version, had quite modest healing. The biggest number was Mercy’s 60 single target hps. This made chip damage viable, and heroes like Soldier, Genji and Tracer were stronger, cuz they could score a kill with a constant pressure, which could not be negated. And then blizz started to make a lot of heroes who could exceed healing and protective capabilities of previous heroes. Ana heals A LOT if she lands her shots. Moira heals even more and her healing is aoe. Bap hals a bit lesser but still more than any of the release supports. At the dawn of OW, the only big barrier was Rein’s but now there’s a bunch. that resulted in a chip damage being less and less viable cuz it just is healed very quickly. So the onshots rose, and blizz started to buff non-oneshot dps to make them viable. Blizz cannot really fix the damage power creep problem without fixing team damage mitigation, or making lot of dps heroes suboptimal.
I think it’s too easy to just say power creep is to blame for genji…that’s not denying it’s existence…just that other things factor in as well…
Moira and brig’s existence I would argue are a major part as well as they were brought in specifically to deal with his type of play (and I would argue are too good at)…
and I think we also have other direct competitors for genji as well now…the part in the dev comments about trying to find a place for him is technically true…doomfist and now echo both crept into his space (and power crept to boot)
Suffice to say balance in this game is EXTREMELY complex and I KNOW it’s never going to be “right”…it only gets harder with each new hero addition
this is all i need to read to give like
oh wait its titanium
Although i do still think genji needed this buff. Not out of pickrate, or winrate, because his kit was just bad, he was bad compared to other flankers thus i attribute his pickrate to popularity, genji is elusive when it comes to stats simply cuz people want to play him cuz he is “fun” i mean hell you are a damn cyborg ninja with the power of god and anime on your side and you yell japanese voicelines while murdering everyone with a sword in a shooter
the problem became when they didnt nerf his ult charge to make up for the extra dmg
This should be stickied?
Oh, great. Didn’t we learn anything from it before? How “fun” it is for supports and tanks in it?
tldr?
Well said and 100% agree. Blizz should respond to this well researched and laid out take.
Well said, Titanium. Nice to see logic applied, even if it will fall on deaf ears, as usual. It took them three years, but the devs have finally managed to make the entire support playerbase feel like the Mercy players did back in '17.
I expected nothing better than that, love.
This thread is much appreciated! 
Couldn’t agree with you more!
People who think the game can be balanced by just looking at pickrates have absolutely no clue about game balance. Especially when you select certain pickrates on purpose to manipulate people into thinking that a hero is OP, while ignoring other pickrates from places like the OWL.
Ah yes true, very true. There’s nothing more meaningful, there isn’t a more sincere and authentic way of making us feel heard and understood, than publically acknowledging that those select few have a private discord server with the devs and it’s really mostly just them who have the most say in development matters, and that listening to the player base is basically making sure that those select few in the private discord are catered to.
Such professionalism, very PR strategy. Wow.
i like how u say stats doesn’t matter
and continue to use pickrates
please know that the stats u see on overbuff are nothing cuz of private profiles
did anyone even ask why the devs actually never talk about them ?
or anyone else that actually talk about balancing the game ?
THESE STATS MEAN LITERALLY NOTHING
pickrates and winrates ARE LITERALLY nothing
Even if they were 100% accurate, a few variables taken out of context from a complex system are not quantitative evidence, at all. They’d have some anecdotal value. (If they were accurate and up to date, but Overbuff figures are distorted like you say so there’s that)
And I say this about all arguments based on these statistics, no matter the side, no matter what pro or contra are stated.
We don’t have true statistics of the game, at all.
Please help spread the good word wherever necessary, you’re right.
exactly
yet u see people saying
this hero pickrate is good he is strong
he is the highest winrates in the game or what ever
nerf him
dude forums are a dead place
there is a few people who come here and say the truth
the first time i wrote a discussion on the forums
were about genji being so hard to play cuz of his dash hitbox and deflect not working properly and shurikens and blade swings doesn’t reg
and i see people calling me a whining genji player who want moira to be nerfed
and i want my hero to be buffed and he is the best hero in the game cuz he is the second or the third highest pickrate hero in the game
pure nonsense