This is just a mental exercise to elaborate on the high-skill/low-skill dilemma of late. My opinion is that each hero should retain value. That said, let’s get stuck into this.
Can you come up with one high-skill hero that actually counters Tracer or Genji that isn’t already in the game?
The higher their movement speed and mobility through passives and other abilities, the harder it is by default to hit those heroes.
Therefore, creating a hero with high aim doesn’t really seem to counter small, high speed heroes like Genji and Tracer.
High aim heroes with a lack of mobility, like Widow, McCree, Soldier, Ana never have these issues because they aren’t harder to hit than other characters. They just have high damage(Except Ana who just has some mechanical issues unique to her).
As for Genji, Zarya is the only (kinda) counter that really requires aim and it only works because her primary fire is a beam.
Genji and Tracer specifically are targeted BECAUSE when they are practiced enough, they have advantages that downplay what players of these heroes seem to value most. Which is aim.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. It’s just raw advantage in the aim department.
Tell me how you create a high skill hero that makes a real difference against a good Genji or Tracer, that also requires the aim everyone is arguing about.
I think that hero’s weapon should have a high firerate. That means that it would be OK to miss some of your shots, but it would still reward aim.
Can’t think of the abilities though
Counter already exists ,It’s called mccree ,just buff him (mainly ,his survivability) and you’re set to go ,or get a pocket mercy /zen to insta-kill tracer and help with genji.
Also ,by this point any high tier mccree knows the deflect hitbox and how to flash above it ,and now it’ll be even easier thanks to the hitbox nerf.
The counter to deflect ? yes (that’s of course unless you just wait it out) ,which also takes skill to throw at the right spot ,while on a hero that also takes skill to play ,the rest of the fight is aim
Which is my point. The counter to Genji,for those that have to aim, is stun. Because deflect. Otherwise, Genji gets out of dodge or counters while also being harder to hit.
It’s by no means a great feat to hit him, but it is a clear advantage in the aim game.
McCree’s advantage is stun and high damage in comparison.
I had a random idea. Make a hero that creates half-invisible barriers the size of 1/3 of a Mei ice-wall. If someone runs into that barrier, they get bounced back and stunned for 1,5 seconds. That would add a good defensive feature that can actually protect supports from a tracer just randomly running up to them. But its terribly OP. But only terribly OP deal with terribly OP heroes. Bleh.
I mean the problem with saying that McCree is a “high skill” counter to Genji/Tracer is that the part of his kit that actually counters them, is the lowest skill part. So if you buff McCree’s flashbang to better deal with high mobility heroes, you’re reducing the skill required by McCree by virtue of making the easy part of his kit far stronger.
It’s like Ana. On paper, she’s hard to pull off. But when she was good, most times the optimal strategy to heal on her was to shoot Reinhardt in the butt which really wasn’t hard to do. The actual hard parts of her kit were largely ignored by her unless you were RJH tier since it was far more rewarding to utilize the easy parts of her kit (i.e. nade/tank healing)
My point is, when they make new characters that counter Genji or Tracer(Which hopefully they are done with all that), Blizzard can’t do anything that hasn’t already been done in the aim department and very little in high skill options.
So, Brigitte, if she is meant to be a counter to Genji and Tracer, has very little options that require aim in order to counter them. Same with Moira. The developers probably didn’t have a way to implement a whole lot of skill there.