Junkrat Very Minimal Self Damage?

General Discussion
1

First… I’m not excited for the potential hate I’m about to receive because I know a lot of people are not going to like this idea but please hear me out.

Second, I understand why they took away his self damage and it does make sense because he pretty much becomes a throw pick. Example Rein only has to shield his face then Junkrat dies if he decides to keep shooting.

However, I think one thing a majority of us can agree on is that his RIP-Tire should be able to kill himself if he detonates in his face. If you disagree feel free to kindly write an argument of why he shouldn’t. Personally I believe his tire is too low risk and too high reward specifically when it’s being detonated before 2 seconds of it being casted.
This is a bit far fetched but I think if Junkrat is eliminated during the use of his ultimate the RIP-Tire should either be detonated on the spot or possibly destroyed? Seems a bit funny that his tire is being controlled by a ghost rat and honestly I think it would encourage more thoughtful play like positioning, tire wall climbing, tire serpentining, etc. I honestly think D.Va bomb should also be able to kill herself too but that is a different story.

Back to the controversial point. I think allowing a bit of self damage for Junkrat would encourage more thoughtful play. Like I’m talking about the minimum amount to make him still viable. I don’t know the numbers but let’s even say as low as 5%. That means a direct hit does 6.5 damage or a concussion mine does at max 5 damage. He can still duel in close range. For example his one shot combo would still work at the expense of 12.5 health. He can still escape so he doesn’t kill himself from self damage. For example Rein puts his shield in Junkrat’s face. He concussion mines away at the expense of 6 health.

I don’t know the numbers exactly and who knows it might be too much for him to damage himself with his concussion mines so maybe only his primary fire does damage to himself. Maybe the RIP-Tire suicide is too much so also make that only 5% damage which would be only 30 hp at max.

I’m not going to lie I’m a bit biased. I personally don’t like Junkrat but I know a lot of the community plays him. I do not think he should be nerfed to the ground or deleted. However, I think the complete lack of self damage encourages too much of low risk high reward play. I get that he’s not a great hero currently because he has counters specifically Pharah but I feel like with his latest buffs he’s a little silly strong.

Like let’s be honest, he is a lower skilled hero especially when compared to the whole hero roster but I think it would be nice if heroes with a low skill floor still encouraged concepts of higher levels of play mainly positioning.

Before you guys flame me I just want to remind you guys to have a nice day :slight_smile:
If you are going to say some criticism please don’t be a jerk about it. I really love this game and just want to see the game go in the best direction possible. Sorry if I offended any Junkrat mains :frowning:

Last thing I forgot to add. I realized that these are significant nerfs so what buffs would you like to see if this were hypothetically to go through?

1 Like
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rip-tire has 100 hp, a loud voiceline when being casted and it can be shot during cast to make it completely useless and junkrat is standing still during the animation

I don’t think it needs more nerfs

8 Likes
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That’s fine, but it shouldnt be done by nerfing a hero’s playing field and not buffing them elsewhere.

Junkrat players arent going to feel fun in playing keep-away with their enemies once they just bum-rush him like idiots. If you want to shave some of his power for the sake of skillful play, its important to consider how he can be strong in other areas.

For instance, trade self damage for faster projectiles with more consistent size to reward aiming direct hits.

2 Likes
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Junkrat is one of the few balanced heroes in the game, who typically only see’s playtime on maps that favour him. He’s fine.

2 Likes
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he already freezes in place and has one of the loudest ult announcements as well as a chance to simply shoot the ult. Using his ult as a point blank defense is already a giant risk.

Real world logic really isn’t an argument. There are too many inconsistencies purely in the name of gameplay balance.

This used to be the case. It was horrible.

I think costing him his ONE dominant encounter would make him even less popular than he already is. You would engage and unless you were TOTALLY surprising the other side… likely die either immediately or quickly since unlike the other close quarters DPS, he has NO sustain. Reaper can engage for however long because of his life steal, Mei because she has damage mitigation and healing. Junk would just have to kill one person and leave.

You just admitted you were biased… don’t be insulting. He has a low skill floor sure. But a good junkrat who can mine combo or launcher juggle in the sky is miles above the entry level “lol here’s some bombs” guys.

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I think that’s a really good idea actually and a really good point that I forgot to leave out. If a nerf like this were to go through what potential buffs would you like to see be put in?

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Why do people keep saying that? Playing Junkrat as the spammer who only shoots down the choke is the low skill mode but becomes completely obsolete above silver rank.
In Gold and above you actually need to be good at playing him and have skill because otherwise Genji, even Ashe and Widow in that rank, will just crush him into the ground.

5 Likes
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Okay

I mean it’s a good ultimate sure but it has the huge downfall of being able to be destroyed, which makes it more easily countered by other ultimates, movement(if u have good gamesense)/reactionary abilities like Baptiste’s immort field. Most ultimates can kill riptire and because of its low hp so can most regular attacks, very quickly. The risk involves losing your ult completely, and dieing during it, being vulnerable the entire time. Junkrat wasting his ult to get a solo kill to save himself ISN’T something that the junkrat player WANTS to happen.

Gameplay and story segregation

You literally have to do all of this already against a team that knows what they’re doing. In teams that work well together riptire means scatter and it’s not impossible to avoid at all. If ur playing Rat you need to do all of this already, adding this weird suicide interaction wont change gameplay.

The problem in wanting to do anything like this is that it doesn’t need to happen, at all, because junkrat already isn’t good enough to warrant changes like this. None of this is highly gameplay impacting enough to matter other than making an arguably already low tier hero worse, even by a small bit, it still matters.

Just kill him or don’t walk into his spam arcs, lol

Yeah that’s the bias. I just don’t see any way this change reflects positively on his gameplay.

I genuinely don’t know what could be considered a proper compensation buff for something like this. It’s oddly specific.

9

No

No, literally nobody but Junkrat whiners want this

Please stop

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First just wanted to apologize. I tried my best to write my post in a way that was least offensive as possible and maybe I should have thought of another way to say he has a lower skill floor.

But moving past, just curious cause you got a lot of insight. If a nerf like this were to go through is there a type of buff you would like to see? OR skip that route entirely and do nothing and leave him be?
This might be an unpopular opinion but I do think that Junkrats are too low skill and high reward. I’ve watched quite a few unranked to GMs and noticed the one of the heroes that can eliminate these top 500s relatively consistently is Junkrat. Higher levels of play is quite different but my main point is I think it would be nice to see the hero go in a direction that is more skillful. Like instead of watching a play from Junkrat and saying “oh that was so lucky” but instead be like “dang this rat is insane.”

He is niche like someone else said soooo yeah but just wanted to hear your opinion.

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because you’re probably responding to people who are in low ranks.

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I don’t agree with self damage. I remember old rat and that’s not fair even if it was low.

I think it’s fine though to allow his ultimate to have a damage affect if within a certain radius.

1 Like
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Why are you wanting to nerf one of the lower tier heroes?
Just stop walking into the spam, something gold and above has already figured out.

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Perhaps it’s also time we focus more on the skill cielings of heroes rather than the skill floors. The Rat honestly has a broad skill tier range, as broad as few like Lucio, Rein or 76. Why not buff his potential, faster primary fire for what you suggest if you want to move his entire skill range higher, instead of just closing his tier range?

And honestly, I dont think Tire is a problem. It has clear power and enough exploitable weaknesses to cover its raw strengths.

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It already glues him in place.

Why do heroes like Ashe and Genji get tide-turning DPS ults that allow them access to their entire kits and still let them move around, but Junkrat- whose ult can be destroyed with a single Firestrike’s worth of damage and whose ult sacrifices all of his movement and self-defense while it’s active, need more punishment?

2 Likes
16

oops.

Fine.

There’s no “pretty much” about it. With self-damage Junkrat was a throw pick. 100% a throw pick. He’s a short-to-medium range hero who couldn’t fight at short range because landing the two shots necessary to kill a 200 health target would effectively put him at an 80 health disadvantage (less effective health than tracer), and conserving health by using his mine to confirm the kill would remove his ability to escape.

Nope. It used to do that and it sucked. You couldn’t use it to defend yourself.

If it’s enough of a disadvantage to remove from D.Va, then it’s good enough to remove from Junkrat.

Then it stands that if baby d.va is killed before her self destruct goes off, self destruct should abort.

Additionally, thematically, when Junkrat uses rip-tire he plugs his ears with his fingers and closes his eyes while waiting for the “kaboom!”. The tire is completely independent of junkrat. It surviving his death makes perfect sense.

It’s not being controlled. It controls itself. Junkrat is just an idiot.

That’s pointless levels of damage. No invisible mechanics. If something happens, you should be able to notice it happening. That means that if we’re going with self-damage, it needs to have a noticeable effect, and he will need to be compensated if necessary.

He’s not.

Having a low floor doesn’t mean you can’t also have a high ceiling. Junkrat’s ceiling is super-high. With his smaller grenades, it’s one of the highest in the game with a maximum skill being able to shoot pharah, Echo, and/or Mercy out of the air with back-to-back direct hits.

So lets talk about an alternate junkrat design that contains self-damage.

No invisible mechanics, so we’ll totally revert him back to half-damage. So he takes up to 40 damage per grenade up close. Everything else is the same as live junkrat.

This junkrat has a massive problem: His projectiles are most effective at super-close range meaning to have any kind of real value against competent opponents he must take self-damage. This means he has a severe health-deficit. His effective health becomes his maximum health minus the average damage he will deal to himself in the process of killing a target with his grenade launcher.

If your average target dies in two shots, it means he has a built-in health deficit of 80 health with an effective maximum health of 120.

That’s less health than Tracer with roughly 3x the hitbox (Junkrat has a massive hitbox for a DPS. It’s roughly the same size as doomfist’s).

This leaves us with a clear problem to compensate for.

Compensation package 1: Direct compensation for self-damage

Compensate junkrat for expected self-damage by increasing his base health from 200 to 300.

This increases his effective health at close range from 120 to 220 and neatly solves the self-damage problem at close range. Unfortunately it also impacts his performance at medium and long ranges and could potentially render him extremely survivable beyond close range far and beyond anything even remotely healthy.

Lets be frank here. I don’t see too much chance that blizzard didn’t try this. From a programming/development standpoint, increasing a basic value like health that we already know can be set individually is going to be much easier than whole-sale removing/adding a mechanic.

They tried this exact change at some point, and decided it didn’t work after testing it in-house. My guess is that it breaks him at medium-long ranges and makes the spam people fine annoying far, far worse as you couldn’t use counter-fire to make him stop.

Compensation package 2: Increase medium-long range effectiveness at the expense of short range effectiveness

This junkrat has 120 effective health at short range.

Add a minimum range for grenade detonation to junkrat’s grenade launcher to curb his effectiveness at short range and encourage junkrats to move back a bit. Under 6 meters his grenades no longer explode when striking an enemy and instead deal impact damage only before dropping to the ground and arming.

In exchange, his projectile size is increased back to 0.3 once they have traveled at least 6 meters making him more able to land direct hits at medium and long range.

Compensation package 3: Emphasize “trapper”

This junkrat has 120 effective health at short range.

Try to shift junkrat away from close range towards medium range by buffing trap. Trap gets a second charge, its cooldown is decreased from 10 seconds to 7, increased deployment range to around 7m, and junkrat can have up to 5 traps out at one time.

The idea is to allow junkrat to exert counter-flank and counter-objective pressure with his traps by increasing the number of them he can have out at once and making it easier to deploy them into effective, hostile positions.

With more traps out at once, it becomes more likely that opponents will step on them. Stepping on a trap opens the target up for medium or long-range fire as even junkrat can hit a stationary target at range.

The disadvantage here is that more traps could make junkrat more oppressive, especially against opponents who are hip-deep in dunning-krueger and
Illusory superiority.

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I mean… I actually HATE junkrat so you’re not insulting me… I’m just trying to be as impartial as possible.

I honestly would leave him be or maybe even just buff his projectile speed but reduce the amount of time it sits there being a booby trap (people hate that you can just walk onto the launcher shots). Junk isn’t in a bad place atm but he has no place in the meta. He counters a lot of heroes we just don’t see anymore. His thing is sudden burst damage and he ultimately has to kill solo for the most part since his shots make everyone ELSES shots miss.

So I think at the time being there is no reason to make him arguably worse.

Low ranks will always complain about high damage because it feels like theres no counterplay when you’re just running into it. Reaper destroys at low ranks as well.

To give you some perspective I was hugely against his “no self damage” change when it first happened. I got really sick of getting point blank ulted… but then I realized how much opportunity I had to kill him during that initiation and adjusted.

I would say to this: Try doing what those “lucky” rats are doing consistently. I have found it is VERY difficult. All in all I would suggest that no matter how much you hate the hero, try them out before asking for changes.