Junkrats primary fire is, by far, the most inconsistent one in the game and his primary fire size reduction nerf was by far one of the worst things they could have done to him. Back in April a ptr patch went live reducing his size from 0.3 to 0.2
Tom Powers said this, “Decreasing the Frag Launcher’s projectile size means he will have to aim a bit more carefully to land powerful direct hits.”
this was a horrible idea. how are you supposed to aim projectiles that are very small, that don’t travel in a straight line, and occasionally ghosts through peoples hitboxes because they are so small?
reducing the hitbox encourages spam , it doesnt reward skill at all.
this change forces junkrat to play at close range where he isnt supposed to be played because the primary fire nades are so small and slow. junkrat is supposed to be played as a mid range area denial hero. the 33% hitbox nerf forces him to play like this and he dies 10 times more because of it
his shots are so small it becomes random if you hit or not, you cant hit what your aiming at, not because your bad. its because what your aiming at can easily step out of the way of a perfectly aimed shot
primary fire really needs to go back to 0.3 or the projectile speed needs to be increased so he has a chance to “aim” them
(heres a megatheread for everything about junkrat)
tbh all I wanted was his ultimate charge to be reduced before so he didn’t get ult charge so fast. But the projectile nerf was just… An indirect, suboptimal way of doing that…
I like it, honestly. But it charges quite fast if you hit your targets. Which, prior to the projectile size decrease, he got so fast. And that was the issue people had.
IMO what I think happened was that people got so fed up with him having his ult so fast, they would accept and praise any nerf - however suboptimal it was - that helped it decrease its charge. Now…here we are.
tbh I don’t even know what I’d want. I’d be happy if it hit from .3 when it was in the air, but decreased after a bounce. But I’d also hope for a decrease in charge rate to his ultimate.
Can’t even be mad when a Junkrat I play against is charging his ult as fast as before. Having started to practice Junkrat (since I’m a full-roster flex player), I know it isn’t easy. Especially not anymore.
This is really the thing that kills me about Junkrat now. Before the nerf, I was getting all gold medals with him in most of my matches. I was a good Junkrat, I didn’t die a lot, I was practical and useful. Now I’m lucky if I get gold damage, and half the elims I used to. It’s not the fact that it’s harder to aim, I actually do land my shots regularly, but every time I land a shot on a genji and it just slides through him rather than killing him like it should have and then I die, I just…
Ugh.
And honestly they keep messing up the heroes I love playing and changing them so I can’t enjoy them anymore, and it makes me not even want to play. Like what’s the point of mastering a hero when they’re just going to get made irrelevant in five minutes by a dumb nerf?
An indirect, suboptimal way of doing that…
But yeah…
But it charges quite fast if you hit your targets. Which, prior to the projectile size decrease, he got so fast. And that was the issue people had.
