I’ve decided to play 10 hours on each tank in order to get a solid base line on every tank in the game so that if I ever need to swap, I’ll have a decent baseline. I probably won’t do Ball and Doomfist b/c you really need to specialize in those tanks in order to get any good at them. All of the other tanks are fairly close in play style, granted you still need to know how brawl, poke, and dive works. Anyway, back to the point at hand. I reached JQ and I’m working on her 10 hours, and I really think that JQ needs another buff for competitive play. Yes, she did just get an HP buff, but I don’t think that’s quite enough, and here are my why reasons why. For reference, I am a diamond level tank on PC, so that’s where my perspective is coming from in terms of skill.
1.) Outside of the beta when she first came out, she’s never really been a great pick. Why introduce her into the game if she’s not going to have a moment of domination like nearly every other hero that was released after the original hero pool back in OW1? Although to be fair, Rammatra hasn’t been dominate either outside of about 2 weeks where his ultimate was potentially infinite and he had just gotten the movement speed buff.
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Her ultimate can be interrupted in a seemingly infinite number of ways, making it incredibly weak, though it’s very strong if you can manage to land it. For example, Ana can sleep it, Rein can counter charge it, Orisa can spin AND Javelin it, Mei can wall it, Kiriko can suzu it, Brig and Lucio can interrupt (throw ult’s trajectory off course) by booping her mid charge. Those are just the major counters, I can keep going for ability based counters, AKA “soft” counters that cleanses the anti-heal effect. For example, Zarya can bubble it, Reaper can wraith it, Mei can ice block it, and Moira can fade it. That’s a good portion of the roster who can either hard or soft counter her ultimate, and all of the counters are just plain abilities, so you aren’t even trading ults. This makes it essentially worthless in many scenarios , and unless you are extremely smart about when you use it, and doing that requires you to have insane game sense, using it poorly puts JQ (and her teammates) at a huge disadvantage in terms of ult economy. Furthermore, let’s not forget that you have to actually have some skill to use her ult. You can’t just use it and not have your commanding shout up. If you don’t, you are likely dead. You also can’t go too far with the ult or you’ll be in no mans land. There are just too many restrictions on this hero for it to ever be a reasonable pick (over other tanks) for someone unless they just like pain for some reason, lol.
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She has incredibly weak poke compared to other poke tanks. I consider her a hybrid between poke and brawl, but even other hybrids, like Rammatra, Hog and even Zarya have much better poke than JQ. Heck, even Orisa, a brawl tank, whose damage which was recently been nerfed into the ground (at distance), is still much better than JQ at poking enemies down.
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She’s not that great of a brawl tank either. She can’t go down mid and stand toe-to-toe with other brawl tanks and live to tell-the-tale. Orisa, Reinhardt, and Rammatra would easily destroy her. If she can manage to get past them by attacking from off angles (like a Hog would), then she can be effective at killing squishes than Rein or Orisa (assuming she doesn’t get kited). However, at that point, why not just pick Hog or Rammatra? They both have more damage, a better ultimate, and Hog at least has much better self healing.
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She has poor mobility. She has a cooldown that gives her over health and a 30% speed buff for 5 seconds along with her team (only they get 50 over health and an additional 30% movement speed for 3 seconds), but the CD on it is incredibly long, and if she manages to get past the other teams tank with off angles (like Hog would), any brawl tank can just turn around, use their movement abilities to get to her (like Rein/Orisa), and force a brawl where they are far superior due to the reasons I mention above. Furthermore, that movement speed buff is for horizontal movement. It does nothing for vertical movement. If she needs to access high ground, she doesn’t have a chance. Even Orisa could get there faster than JQ could as Orissa’s spin also gives her a 30% movement speed increase, only Orissa’s CD is much lower. It’s actually half as long at 7 seconds, while JQ’s is 14 seconds. Granted the whole team gets it with JQ, but I’m referring to JQ’s ability to use her horizontal movement speed buff ability to get to high ground. Overall, I think JQs ability is better during the short period of time that it’s up, but after it’s down, JQ is a sitting duck.
In summary, for the reasons above, I think JQ is need of another buff. Here are some potential ideas. I think that shortening the CD on her commanding shout to perhaps 10 seconds, like a Zarya bubble, but then reducing the over health to herself and teammates by 10% would be sufficient. I would like to keep it on her teammates so that her team synergy doesn’t change and she remains good with the same comps that she’s always been good with. If you don’t want to reduce the cool down on it, then how about giving her a person speed boost when she uses Carnage? Also, if nothing else, how about allowing her to use commanding shout while using carnage? Her commanding shout requires insane game sense to get quality returns from while many other heroes, like Orissa’s spin or fortify for example, easily gets a ton of value while requiring much less game sense. If you don’t want to do any of those ideas then maybe you have some other ideas, but whatever it is, I feel she needs a slight buff. Why would anyone play her when they could play Hog? It’s pretty bad when even a super nerfed Hog (less one shots) is still better than a recently buffed JQ. On the bright side, I think JQ is incredibly fun to play. Outside of ball and Doom Fist, I think she might be the most fun to play. She’s probably tied (or is very close) with D.Va in my book, in terms “fun factor”.