Junkrat needs to be nerfed

General Discussion
41

He performs far above the skill tier he was designed for with little effort. He definitely needs to be reigned in a bit.

I feel if they bought back self damage with his nades (not mines though) he’d be far more balanced. Right now Junk get’s away with far to much area control and bad positioning because his kit allows his to do so without punishment. Bringing back self damage would raise his skill cap in terms of choosing where he’d fight and force Junks to position far more wisely. Right now they can be reckless almost anywhere on the maps dealing massive amounts of damage with next to zero repercussions, that mixed with the fact the he’s very low skill mechanically makes him a very OP hero.

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42

Exactly thanks, everyone in this post except for like 2 people are saying junkrat is way too strong and even one of his counters (genji) has a difficult time killing him

43

If you are having trouble countering hom as GENJI then you are just a horrible genji.
"Gets away with bad positioning…without punishment"
What? Maybe if you actually TRIED to punish him when he’s out of position you’d actually be able to kill him.
But nope instead you just let him escape back to his team.

If Junkrat is so easy to do well with now, then why has every single season 6 Junkrat I’ve run into gotten stomped by me?
Oh that’s right, BECAUSE I KNOW HOW to counter enemy Junkrats that are so predictable and easy to outplay(And thoer aim is garabge)

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44

Honestly, junk rat isn’t hard to counter, as long as you can play your hero well. I am a tracer main, so a junk rat can easily one shot me, but because I can easily predict what the junk rat will do, I can time my blinks to dodge his bombs and mines. Also, a good Genji can just jump over his bombs, and a reaper can flank him and one shot him. Dva can eat his balls, and kill him easily. There are plenty of counters that can wreck junkrat. You just have to play them well.

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45

And of course the obvious counter which every seems to forget about(even in diamond!?!!?)

Pharah/Pharahmercy

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46

The point being that he CAN BE OUT OF POSITION because he kit allows him to do so, he can escape EASILY, deal massive damage EASILY and frag out in close quarters EASILY with next to no aim, so even when you do try to punish him he still has a more than fair chance of survival. That’s the point of this whole conversation, his entire kit takes very little actual skill to use well for the amount of value you get from it, out of all the DPS he’s the easiest to use mechanically yet has one of the highest damage out puts, does that make any sort of sense? He can destroy shields better than anyone except Bastion.

You talk about Pharmercy being a counter, sure, it is, yet Junk is a counter to EVERYTHING else that isn’t a Pharmercy.

The whole idea of balance when it comes to designing a hero, is that the more skill it takes to operate a character the more value you should get out of that character, hence why Tracer perform so well at the top tiers, yet with Junkrat this isn’t true. Junk takes low skill mechanically to operate, can be badly positioned or even at the very back line of his team and still deal massive damage and is one of the best anti dive characters in the game, meaning when he does get dived he still has a more than fair chance of winning that fight due to his kit, the person diving a Junk always has to be far more skilled than that Junk to win. Doesn’t seem balanced to me.

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47

Are you forgetting characters that have any sort of long range? They counter him pretty easily. Widow, Hanzo, McCree, Soldier, Orisa, Bastion, Torb, Mei, Ana, Lucio, Zen… Stay out of his kill box, and your advantage increases exponentially. Get a Sombra to keep him locked down. If you’re up against one of these so called “little skill” Junkrats, he won’t be able to do jack if you take his mines away.

Play Junkrat for longer than 10 hours, and see just how much aim and predictive firing you actually need on him to be effective. Unless you’re going up against doughnut teams that keep walking into his bright red glowing balls, or have no game sense whatsoever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMCJwjv7s7w
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48

hiding behind cover spams choke getting more accidental kills, and then ults kills everyone. YES! BALANCED, for sure.

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49

Wrong.

First off, half the heroes you mentioned are not Junkrat counters in the slightest once you place a shield infront of Junkrat, if you’re hoping a Widow or Hanzo will break a shield before a Junk does to get a pick you’re going to be waiting for a very long time. Torb, Bastion, MEI?! If you’d played any games above Gold you’d realise how insane that sounds. It’s easy enough to say “duh, stay out of his range” but when he’s on point behind an Orisa shield and your team needs to take the point, “staying out of his range” isn’t a viable option.

And sure, you’d think long range characters would be counters to him, yet every single one of those characters takes more skill to use mechanically than it does to use Junk, so if you’re in mid Gold, jumping onto a Widow/Hanzo/Mcree isn’t exactly a viable option because they don’t have the mechanical skills necessary to counter that Junk effectively. The whole idea of ‘counters’ is that it’s easier to operate that character (using that characters strengths) to effectively shut down another, that’s why Winston is a good counter to Genji, etc.

Also, we’re not talking about just countering here, we’re talking about Junks overall usefulness. Junk is good in almost every situation, he deals massive damage (more than any of those so called counters you mentioned apart from Bastion except Bastion has to sit still and is a sitting duck) so while you’re there sitting on Hanzo to try and counter him, he’s already won the shield war and destroyed your tanks. He is insane with crowd and area control (more than any of those so called counters you mentioned), is extremely mobile and great in 1v1 scenarios, no other character performs as well in EVERY SINGLE CATEGORY of gameplay as well as Junk does for the amount of skill required.

The fact of the matter is, is that Junk right now is useful in almost any situation because he’s good at almost everything, and everything it takes to shut him down takes more skill to play than it does to play him. The opposing team ALWAYS has to be a BETTER player than that Junkrat player, not as good, BETTER. That’s what makes him unbalanced.

50

Junkrat gain ult too fast.
Imho ult charge speed need a nerf for sure.

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51

I think he needs to damage himself with his bombs. Only character that can do 120 damage body shot, plus crits, plus no self damage with any explosives

52

I’m smack in the middle of GM right now (Low Top 500?). Junkrat isn’t OVERPOWERED, but oh boy is he brainlessly strong.

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53

As long as you’re not a complete donut, they do pretty well against him.

She is actually one of the better close defenses against Junkrat.

Except, that’s not Junkrat’s optimal position. Defending or attacking a point, he’s much better on the high ground. If you’re behind an Orisa/Reinhardt shield as a Junkrat for longer than a few seconds, you’re doing it wrong.

Oh yes. I forgot mechanical skill is terrible below Diamond… Except that in quite a few cases, it’s not. More often that not, it’s bad positioning and/or bad game sense that lose fights, even in low tiers.

So… what’s stopping your from running your own Junkrat? If he’s so easy to play effectively, then someone on your team should pick him to take care of the enemy JR.

As a guy that plays JR, even halfway decent Widows are a threat. Pharahs are, as well, and they don’t even have to be decent. He doesn’t have to have a hard counter, as not every hero in the game does, but he’s not as mindless as you people are trying to make him out to be.

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54

Uh… Widowmaker does 120 for a body shot. Hanzo does 125, Reaper can do 140 and Torb’s alt fire can do 150 if all their pellets hit…

Junkrat can’t crit, as he can’t get headshots.

As was stated, it was removed because he had no consistent effective range.

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55

If Junkrat was even half as strong as people claimed him to be, we’ll be seeing more of him in the OWL being run constantly.

Unfortunately, he isn’t that strong or menacing. That title belong to someone else who’s far more unfair and needs to be nerfed, aka, Tracer.

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56

No, running an attack Torb or Bastion on almost any map is next to throwing unless its a payload map, those 2 characters you have to build almost your entire team around to work effectively (see pirate ship). So no, this isn’t a viable option, next.

Mei, maybe in a 1v1 situation but this isn’t a 1v1 game. a Mei can’t just walk through an entire enemy team with tunnel vision into the enemy backline without encountering resistance, she’ll die before she gets there, also she does next to nothing for shield wars and her icicle is harder to hit than a Junk nade is harder to throw. So no, Mei isn’t a viable option, next.

If you’re a DPS, ANY DPS, that isn’t utilising your teams shield you’re a fool and YOU’RE doing it wrong. Yes high ground is strong, that’s why your whole team should be using it, not just you, if you’re split from your team, unless you’re a flanker, you’re an easy pick.

Yes unfortunately the lower you go from Diamond the lower the mechanical skill is, that’s not me being mean that’s just straight up fact, I used to be in Silver, I know what the hitscan are like there they’re the exact reason Junk dominates in those tiers, THEY CAN’T HIT HIM. People below high plat just don’t have the mechanical skill necessary to utilise high skill cap heroes like Hanzo/Widow/Mcree/Tracer properly to get any value out of them. Meaning, if you’re a sniper main in Silver, more likely than not you have bad aim and your aim is probably whats keeping you there. Sorry, not sorry.

Your team can run a Junk, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s overpowered, sure utilise a hero when they’re in an OP state, that’s what they did with Mercy, just because your team has the option of picking a hero doesn’t suddenly make that hero not OP, and trust me Junk is OP, he offers far to much on every single front of gameplay damage/crowd control/shield battles/1v1 situation/mobility with next to no draw backs, that’s why he needs a nerf.

57

It was the same for the first few months of the game with Hanzo. People didn’t know how to counter or avoid his dragons and kept calling for a nerf.

58

And yet, we got the pickrate stats and its clearly shown he falls out of favor from plat onwards in favor of other reliable heroes.

Junkrat appears on the top 10 list below plat the most but other than that, he doesn’t makes the list onwards.

I’ll share a bit of my experience as a diamond, if you think Junkrat is unfair, I can assure you that Tracer is even more unfair because of how insane the value she gets. This is maybe just diamond to low master tracers, the GM tracers are even more crazier and insane. The OWL basically highlights the utter peak of what Tracer can do.

Junkrat is now a gatekeeper, much like how bastions/sym/torb and even Pharahs are now. If you don’t learn or polish the necessary skills to deal with them, prepare for the consequences.

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59

LOL what are you talking about.

On both Overbuff and Master Overwatch stats show that over all tiers in the last 6 months Junkrat has been the highest picked DPS. Don’t know where you’re getting these stats from.

Tracer might be unfair in Diamond plus but that’s 15% of the player base, if Tracer is OP for 15% of the player base then Junkrat is OP for the other 85%.

This, Junk is a gatekeeper stuff it just pure BS. Having a character in an OP state then justifying it by calling him a ‘gatekeeper’ is nonsense. That’s like say “Well, pre nerf Mercy is the gate keeper, if you can’t polish your skills to counter her before she res’s prepare for the consequences” It’s pure BS, Junks kit makes him OP, his damage makes him OP, the fact he takes no self damage makes him OP. He needs a nerf.

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60

Did I say every instance? Don’t think so.

You have been talking about counter play this whole time, now the one hero that requires less mechanical skill than Junkrat that can take him on 1v1, isn’t viable because she can’t get to him on the back line? If you’re playing a Junkrat that stays on the back line, he’s not doing much but a little area denial. If that’s the case, then any long range hero will work well enough to keep him locked down.

You just said:

So, is Orisa on point, or does she have high ground? Can’t do both. Junkrat is severely limited hunched behind a shield. If he’s not flying through the air, flanking, or trying to get in your face, he’s not being effective.

Yeah, you realize I have the same weapon accuracy with McCree as you do, right? That’s going by competitive accuracy, because I know QP accuracy averages from day one, and I don’t think many people knew how to aim then.