I mean, they refused to address the core problem of the game prior to brigs release which was the lack of good counters to tracer and to a extent dive, its the reason moira was added and when she failed, brig was next…
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They needed to add more heroes (or gave existing heroes ability changes) that countered dive when used in unison, not a single do-it-all character. That’s why she literally broke the game and everyone quit except support mains.
hopefully overwatch 2 comes out with a rework
It’s really sad honestly.
To this day, this video is so outdated and wrong, I’m surprised they haven’t deleted it yet.
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That Brigitte looks freaking amazing. Too bad the current one we’ve got would die in about 1-2 seconds if she dared run in front of Reinhardt like that.
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I think og brig only needed 1 nerf and that would solved a lot of her problems.
Nerf primary fire dmg from 35 to 20.
That said, shield bash nerfs in matter of easiness to use is ok too, since that shouldn’t be that easy to land.
I find weird how now your main healing comes from Repair packs and Whipshots instead of her primary fire, that’s one of the reasons I think people don’t know how to play Brig.
You have a melee support that activates her healing ability by doing melee damage with her PRIMARY fire at close range. They get close, they die, is counterintuitive gameplay.
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Oooo I think we have our winner here!
Seriously IDK who on the team was like ‘Mmm, Brigitta is a very strong anti-flanker that deals damage and healing in an AOE radius around her, so let’s… give her a no aim long distance heal ability that always works! that won’t cause problems that will force us to super nerf it because it is inherently as a concept incongruitous with her core design or anything, leaving her a weird lopsided mess, no sirree!’
Cuz that person needs to get fired.
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I can understand, i used to main her.
It doesn’t matter whether people thought she was strong or not, Blizzard’s job is to balance the heroes in a way that retains their identity, keeps them playable but pushes them in line with others - which they have failed in every way when it comes to Brig.
Community opinion doesn’t have that much of an influence on the devs anyway, Genji is a prime example and the mess that was his buffs and then nerfs lol.
Brigitte was going to exist anyway - but flankers getting nerfed would’ve been so much more healthier than over-loading Brig and creating a broken hero. We still live in the remnants of GOATS - to this day and the power creep is only being dealt slightly.
Most heroes didn’t need to get reworked to fit into 2-2-2, most metas/comps prior to role queue consisted of a 2-2-2 dynamic anyway because of the harmony between roles, having reliable healing, tanking and sustainable damage.
Again, Brigitte was going to be released anyway, they’ve talked about how hero releases they can have months, or years planned in advance. Someone so close to a ‘poster’ child wouldn’t have just been a second thought as a retaliation against one meta. You know?
How was the buff too much? Her stats didn’t budge from what they were pre-buff, she only managed to go up a bit in PR in GM, otherwise she is pretty much at the bottom everywhere else. The only area in which the buff was felt was pro-play
how would one go about it though? They’ve never done a fully fledged rework, it’s only been abilities really that received reworks rather than the heroes themselves as a whole.
I do think that she was busted, however Blizzard’s response to that was reckless. they tried to shift the power in her kit, which then made her useless in the way that she was meant to be played on a fundamental level - instead of allowing her to be flexible in this department or encouraging the player to be front-line. [quote=“Sine-11934, post:28, topic:565605, full:true”]
She should never have existed in the first place. She was created solely to shut down an entire meta by herself, ie to stop 2 tanks and 2 dps from deleting a 200hp hero. Of course anyone who could do this was going to be OP. Of course anyone who could shut down this many heroes from getting a kill was going to be able to make any single one of those heroes unplayable.
It’s unbelievable that anyone thinks she was a good idea, including support mains. Dive is meant to kill support. Making a support that counters dive is like making a character like junk rat a widow and pharah counter. Or like making a tank that counters reaper.
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Brig’s idea was great. Support deserves to have diversity and to have a choice that allows them to fight back and counter flankers - they shouldn’t just be dead meat.
However, she was given too much for her plate. She was a front-line anti-flanker. It was bound to get abused once the community learned to play her. Now, she’s just an empty shell though.
To be quite fair, counters to flankers existed, maybe they weren’t amazing but they definitely existed
I think alongside the already mentioned problem, another problem was that the community was still in that awkward phase, where the floor skill was really low as people weren’t so accustomed to the game, heroes and etc. It’s definitely gotten better over the years as players can now shutdown these heroes much easier without even having to be a direct counter.
Which is why I’m so disappointed.
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I want to preface this by saying this is purely for arguments sake- not a “this IS the way it NEEDS to go” claim- and is little more than an idea put forth to paint an example
Personally- I’d keep her abilities largely the same, but introduce more appreciable windows of failure, or less binary results in her kit.
For example
With repair pack, I’d love to see it have 2 forms.
Have the first work exactly like it does now- line up on a team mate, hit the ability, send out a heat seeking heal.
The second would be a charged version. Press and hold the ability, charging it briefly (sub 1 second. The point isn’t to “charge” it per say, but to make it clear that you’re going for this heal). Once charged the heal would be empowered- and provide the ability to heal / over heal- much like her old repair packs did. I don’t argue for the values here- there’s a lot of paths we could go. The same healing + a little bit of armor. Slightly weaker heal, but “with armor” it’s more, or maybe it’s the same combined- but half is health, half is armor. Whatever- point is, it’s an empowered version to some degree
But the caveat is it becomes a projectile like sleep dart- and can miss.
So on one hand you have an ability that is arguably stronger.
On the other hand, it can miss- and could potentially be wasted.
There’s some risk / reward- but it’s your choice to utilize it. You can play her exactly like now, or have some room to be stronger- and some room to misplay.
I’d take similar approaches to other things.
I’d argue to have her meme damage do reduced damage to secondary targets- instead of 100% cleave.
This way Brigitte has to be careful about who she is hitting, requiring her to be a bit more careful to ensure she’s hitting her intended target first- like wise if you’re being attacked by briggs you can position around your tanks and actually mitigate her damage to some degree
Again “on the flip side”, I’d argue to have her initial hit do slightly more damage- in the 40 or so per hit range.
This would let Brigitte still be strong against flankers, and even buff her time to kill them by one hit (being anti flanker I think should be a strong point of brigs), but in a group environment to ensure she’s doing max damage to her intended target she’ll have to be a bit more deliberate to make sure she’s hitting the person she actually intends first, instead of doing so without a care.
I’d also argue to have inspire be changed to be an actual aura that only works while players are inside of it.
For those who don’t know-
Inspire is more of an AoE healing buff
If you’re in range when she hits a target and activates inspire, you get the full duration of the heal even if you leave the aura.
This lets team mates be in range for it to get activated, then extend forward and out of its range while benefiting from the full duration of the ability.
This way she (or her targets) would have to ensure they stay in range of Brigitte to benefit fully from the benefits of inspire.
I’d argue to leave her bash and boop alone for now.
But- Things like this.
Changes that allow windows for her to miss or do less- but also pave the way (in general) for her to do more with proper play. This isn’t a “complete rework”, just a tweaked approach to her mechanics that allow her play style and identity to remain nearly identical.
Could you elaborate?
The more surprising part is how that they could release a hero so OP that she continues to struggle to be meta despite such an overwhelming number of nerfs.
Why does number of nerfs matter more than what the hero’s effectiveness is at the end of the day?
Hence the last part of what I said…it’s perfectly fine to question if they’re doing that
but I think it’s worth noting that though you’re saying she lost her identity…when she had “it” she seems to have been too damn strong…
I don’t personally think she’s “lost” per say…she’s still at her best when played in that way (admittedly a lot weaker)…but if they can bring her back in line with her intended design without making her overbearing for most people im all for it
She was never, ever given a chance to develop into that type of character, though. Even when she was at her best, pro level teams didn’t want to commit to using her. Then, when she was finally getting recognition, the meta changed and she had a niche role in it. After that, GOATS came around and Brigitte had the misfortune of being one of the main components, so she was nerfed again and again until she was trash unless she was played in GOATS. After that, she got reworked, and the rework removed pretty much removed her ability to actually be a brawler.
From what I’ve seen, every high level Brig player (Violet, Mightyy, etc.) disagrees with you there. So I have no idea why you hold that opinion.
At best the best way to get value out her right now is as a Repair Pack Bot with a little bit of brawling on the side.
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If the majority of the player base is gold then it makes sense to appeal to the biggest money earner
You note they are back into the same position which make them release Brig again.
Oh damn, Xon fooled me with his necro posting. Damn it.
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The majority of the playerbase isn’t gold though
- Bronze - 8%
- Silver - 21%
- Gold - 32%
- Platinum - 25%
- Diamond - 10%
- Masters - 3%
- Grandmaster - 1%
Usually I take majority as over 50% but sure ig, there’s still 68% of players who aren’t gold and even within gold people won’t agree on balance considering most of them probably don’t know the difference between dragon blade and helix rocket
Plat, Gold and Silver make up the majority of the fan base, and Brig was never META in any of the said rank ( as in her second iteration), and you can make the argument for masters too because she was just getting picked up at the time of her nerfs in masters.
She’s only been truly META in GM which is quite literally 1% of the community, and support mains/Brig mains have to suffer at the hands of the 1%, who abuse heroes.
Look at Ball, his first time ever truly being META and he’s already getting nerfed because of the 1% that abuse heroes.
Balancing shouldn’t mean nerfing a hero so much that they can’t be played anywhere.