Is soldier good, or has he been powercrept out of being a decent pick?

just curious. I hardly see him played in comparison to mccree, ashe, and echo, and sometimes when i play him it feels like i’m not doing much. he’s gotten plenty of buffs in past patches, so i might just have terrible aim.
am I just imagining it, or is he really just not great?

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Soldier got a big dose of power creep for at least two years I think. Last I remember him was nano-visor meta.

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Its not powercreep from the DPS role that makes him bad, its more powercreep from tanks and supports in that they can counter him a lot easier. He is just not very good because of how easy tanks and supports can shut him down.

It would be nice if he was good, but even when he did 20 damage per shot before he was already losing his meta spot to Tracer before they nerfed that because even before all his counters got made it was ugly

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Power creep.

Soldier is currently better now than he ever was, even as far back as triple tank when he was Considered OP, shredding through multiple tanks with Nano Visor.

Every other dps has been buffed or players have gotten much better at infinite skill cap hero’s that he just doesn’t compare anymore.

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well that sucks. he’s my favorite hitscan. i can’t hit anything on ashe but i like her kit, and i can’t hit anything on mccree and his kit’s just… meh.

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No DPS are generally worse than they have been in other points in OW history, its just that other roles are better at dealing with him (plus he was not even good in his own meta and was being pushed out for Tracer).

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hes actually fine, if you look at overbuff he is a little low early on and gets better as you go up

they dont play in owl but they really have an entirely different meta. things are just not the same when you practice 7 hours a day and know where every ice wall and hack are going to be

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He is just the worst midrange hitscan (like one of the commentators on owl said). There is widow, ashe, meccree and soldier and he is just the worst of those 4.

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Not even half true my dude, don’t start.

Hanzo got a rework and tripled his value.
People became proficient with Widow and Tracer.
Doomfist was added to stomp uncoordinated teams with instant gibs.
Ashe’s dynamite is both burst damage and ticks aoe damage on entire teams forcing the enemy to swap to aoe heals.
Echo was just recently added and is the spam master, even more so than junkrat with his now double mines.
Sym and Torb have both had major reworks that made them a lot less niche and increased their damage output.

Dps are in a much better spot then they were. So much so, it required 3 tanks and 3 healers working together in unison just to keep double sniper in check.

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He’s a jack of all trades and master of none.

Such characters are hard to keep from falling UP or being OP after even minor tweaks.

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100 percent true and using DPS that were trash and saying they got better is a bad faith argument. The only thing that matters in an argument over whether power creep is real or not is the line of what makes a playable DPS.

Start of the game who were the 3 best DPS? McCree Widow and Genji. All 3 are weaker now. McCree is still the best DPS in the game (this is his 3rd strongest iteration). Genji is significantly weaker than he was then and is still not awful (though he probably took 1 nerf too many).

There are less trash tier DPS, but the line to be a meta DPS has gone DOWN and that is not in dispute. DPS power creep is a lie.

Meanwhile the line to be a meta support or tank has only gone up.

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DPS in general still have seen various buffs to killing power and reliability. Along with tanks and support losing a bunch of damage mitigation in healing numbers and shield numbers. The shift in power I feel has gone to niche characters to counter a specific match-up rather than generalists.

Though for S76 I feel like in general he still bullied in his role compared to more specific picks. Mei and Reaper will do a helluva better job deal with Rein/Zarya or Sigma/Orisa due to their ability to slow deathball or just damage shields outright. With double shields all over the place or a winston dropping on your head you have little power to do anything.

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I always see him as a more forgiving comfort pick. If i have an off day with aiming but we desperately need a hitscan i use Soldier.

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???

Literally every dps is better now than they were, what are you even on about right now? Are you just randomly picking a fallacy out of a hat hoping it applies to this situation?

That’s 9 of 17 dps that are better than they’ve ever been. And that wasn’t including reaper who’s gotten a tigher spread and better health regen mechanics, mei who has become a sniper in her own right, Sombra’s infinite stealth and tighter spread, McRightClick the Sniper. Even Phara and Bastion have both had direct buffs.

You absolutely have no clue what you’re talking about if you believe it’s the support and tanks who have pushed soldier out of his prime. Rein is a shell of his former self becoming a shield bot with half the shield. D.va turned into 600hp dps instead of being a tank that ate infinite damage. 1shot hog is still unreliable as ever. Winston is feed. Ana’s had her healing slashed from her 75+100% healing nade days. Lucio’s aura’s smaller and his speed boost is much worse, Zenyatta is feed, Moira’s a heal bot and Bap currently has the worst winrate in teh game.

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what if they just buffed his damage to 21 per bullet, made his rockets auto-aim during his ult, and made him just a little bit more accurate?
it wouldn’t be too much of a difference, since mccree’s got higher damage in burst, and burst is better, how about that?

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Soldier is viable, he doesnt need more buffs.

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You do not have 9 meta DPS. The ONLY honest metric when discussing power creep is to look at what DPS are meta and how that relates to the power level of the current meta DPS. McCree is perfect for this because of all the times he has been meta this is his 3rd best state.

Basically to explain it in simple terms: if we were to rate every DPS on a scale of 1-10 and the 3 meta DPS are an 8 but the other 14 non meta DPS are a 3 that would be a very imbalanced game. However, if we decide to nerf the 3 meta DPS down to a level 6 power level and buff the weaker DPS up to either a 6 or a 7 power level, the DPS role did NOT experience power creep. What it instead experienced was a fix to the trash tier DPS but the power of the role did not go up.

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I’m not sure if Soldier was ever IN meta. He’s always somewhere between middling and useless because of his lack of consistent kill secure and his poor ultimate.

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Nice moving the goalposts my dude. We’re talking about power creep and heroes that are better, not which ones are the best and how many are the best at the exact same time. That’s literally not how any of this works. Go away.

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When we had a triple tank meta, for a brief part of that he was great. Before they nerfed him the meta had shifted to either 4 tanks or 3 tank Tracer (because it turned out even in a meta revolving around Soldier he is bad), but he was technically meta at that time.