Theres 3 ways to go about this (speaking for PC not console here):
Soldier has not been decent since season 4, and as someone with 1700 hours on him I do not want him to be broken. I simply want him to be the char he is currently (that feels good to play against and play as). He is better than he’s been in a long while. Still every dps is better than he is (especially in the hitscan roaster) Why pick Soldier when u can pick Ashe or Tracer?
Note: Mccree could use a buff, but thats not for this forum. He’s been decent before but is currently bad.
We can choose to BUFF all the other hitscan chars or nerf widow and ashe further. What shall it be?
1. Most similar to Soldier currently in the live version
- Buff ammo from 25 to 30.
- Change his ult to something that’s actually useful. Examples: No need to reload, healing gets animation canceled when you use ultimate. No spread on the weapon. If not this just redesign the whole ultimate its the worst one in the game. Might be better on console but not on PC.
- Make it so that running for 2-4 seconds reloads his weapon
2. Remove burst/recoil entirely from his kit
- Ammo increased from 25 to 30.
- Damage reduced from 20 to 18 or 19. (he does 20 per bullet at perfect range, decreases the further away a target is)
- Auto Reload if he has sprinted for a certain amount of time (sombra and reaper got this, so why can’t soldier?)
3. Keep the Recoil CSGO thing on Experimental but change this:
- Make recoil less than it is currently. Recoil happening straight away makes long range IMPOSSIBLE.
- The shaking that happens on the screen is too much for me and many others. We’d at the very least like this to be less.
- It definitely is a buff to Soldier’s short range and long range. But making sure that one does not mess up the recoil can be annoying for many. Lots of forum people said that this would make it even harder to concentrate on the game as it’s a lot of abilities going on (not what I think, but I can see the view of it)
- 25 to 30 ammo is good, keep that.
- One could argue that the recoil is suppose to be there and make long range weaker. I argue against because: If soldier is only good short to mid range he’ll be like a weaker Tracer. It will also not solve soldiers problems against widow or ashe. It will only make it worse.
- Long range already uses 2-3 times more bullets than short to mid range uses. Why does long range need even more nerfs that this will then give? Short burst in normal soldier currently can take down widowmaker. Its not very effective nor good but it can work somewhat. The recoil makes it impossible to control, so people who are further away will be drastically more different to kill.
Conclusion: The experimental buff is good for his damage and overall short/mid range. But recoil not happening before after 4-8 shoots or it being less than it currently is could be a solution! It just feels like it goes up far too quickly currently (making long range bad).
If the things I wrote about recoil isn’t going to work out or people find it too powerful I stand by option 1 and 2. Soldier needs something and this would in my eyes not make him completely broken.
References: https://imgur.com/a/RHbG69M
Soldier in practice range on experimental:
https://youtu.be/O1XmuO68ogU 0.40 for shooting Pharah. (it makes it harder to shoot her and widow)
Aiming with Soldier before experimental came out, back in early 2020:
https://youtu.be/6l1Lh99F1Kc?t=6
