It wasn’t. Overwatch dipped strongly over time in the first year after release because the devs made a series of truly awful balance decisions and while they’ve actually done a lot to clean up that mess since, we’re still dealing with some of the fallout from back then.
Let’s remember that Brigitte was a misguided attempt to fix a problem Overwatch has and that the painfully narrow way the game used to be played drove away significantly more people than a single annoying hero being overpowered for a while.
Strategy would be building compositions for map geometry and countering enemy strategy. Tactics would be how and when you attack/defend.
Brig triple supp is a strategy. Dive is a strategy. But brig triple support is not beatable on most maps.
Tactics are how you decide to attack a team’s defense, or how you set your teams defense up. But brig triple support has no tactics, or very simple tactics. Stand on objective. That’s it. Dive required so much more depth in how you go about attacking and defending.
It’s what makes main tanking fun. You are the leader of your troops and have to outsmart the enemy team.
Let’s remember that Brigitte was a misguided attempt to fix a problem Overwatch has and that the painfully narrow way the game used to be played drove away significantly more people than a single annoying hero being overpowered for a while.
Everyone at the higher levels loved dive. Monkey dva are by far the highest skill cap tanks and strat/tactics run through the tanks. Of course the were the strongest way to play at the highest levels, they have the highest skill cap. So at the highest skill level, they do the most.
Parts of dive could have been nerfed like whoever had the better tracer or widow won every game. But those are not difficult fixes with small nerfs.
Rein/Zar (deathball) and Orisa/Hog (bunker) should always be situational at the pro level. Monkey/DVA are more versatile and have a higher max potential. Dive is more complex, more punishable, harder to run, more demanding of your teams coordination and game sense. It is very easy to throw with poor dive execution. Every small mistake from the dive tanks is a lost team fight. You essentially have to be perfect in your macro and micro decision making to make winston work at all.
Dive wasn’t even truly dominant in diamond. People would play it a lot but diamond players aren’t good enough to play monkey. Not true of rein or orisa or Hammond.
Okay, I have been a serious critic of Brig, but in her current state she is pretty balanced. If you’re going to get upset now about her melee attack, then let’s go after Rein and low aim characters like Moira and Winston as well. Brig is no longer a problem.
That’s fair. tracer fall off starts at 5m, blade has a smaller hitbox or cut the total time, DM only affects projectiles or only affects primary or only has 5m radius, widow has 150 health, take 2 seconds off primal.
Dive as a strategy must be viable. If you can’t kill the aoe and burst heal supports you can’t kill anything.
The game was not very fun before brigitte either. Depends on which side of the fence you sat. If you were the genji or tracer i imagine you were having great fun. For the supports, being dove on and feeling useless was not fun.
When are people going to learn fun is subjective. Not everyone can have fun. Someone has to die, someone has to lose. We cant all be winners. Since brig the game has become more fun for me personally so dont just assume that since you arent having fun everyone else feels the same. Now I dont just have to accept that as a healer i am defenseless, i can fight back. Cancer heroes like tracer and genji are kept in check. Thats fun to me. The whole team being solo wiped by a genji ult isnt fun to me.
Season 9 was the best season this game has seen, I remember when Reinhardt/Zarya, Orisa/Roadhog, Winston/D.va (and well any main tank/D.va) tanking compositions were all viable and competitive. Main Tank isn’t even a role anymore, it’s the Reinhardt que.
They needed another support or 2 that had a chance against dive. They needed to nerf dive a hit so there were more options to counter. But dive needs to be viable.
An easy win against flankers was such a poor design choice. If the dive team is better they should win. If you aren’t good the tracer should farm you.
Part of the issue which only got worse is the inaccurate ranking system. People are boosted and when they come across a better player they get wrecked. Instead of balancing dive and fixing the ranking system they gave bad players an option to beat good players
Nah season 2 was. Since the game had only just came out anything was viable, there was really no meta that people forced you to play. Everyone was friendly, there was no toxicity, there were no little kids screaming over voice comms. Every hero felt fun to play and had their own roles. They had just got rid of coinflip and introduced 1 hero limit to make comp more serious. No CC, ana was balanced, no other heroes had been added/reworked. We had just had the first summer games event which was a complete surprise and felt fresh, eichenwalde had just launched at the start of season 2 to celebrate, a whole new map to the game.
Ok, let’s remember how fun this game was before brigitte. Oh, let’s dive even deeper.
How fun it was before any pesky unfun CC heroes were added into the game.
Symmetra 1.0
McCree 420 damage from fth
Even more bugs than now
Only 1 main healer (and it was mercy)
Zen with 150 health and slow discord
Widow with 150 bodyshot
Useless Winston with long cd on jump and even longer on barrier
You could get away from Grav with movement ability
Reaper with soul orbs
Mei that couldn’t cancel ice wall
Junkrat with one mine
Bastion couldn’t move to use repair (that got cancelled if he took damage)
Roadhog’s hook could get you from other dimension and kill you if you got less than 300 hp
SIMPLE GEOMETERY
About hanzo - log arrows that would headshot even if they missed you
D.va could kill herself with self destruct
Oh about other supports: We had only 4 of them, one of which was symmetra
You had to capture whole point to get the score
Sudden death
Long overtime
8 second dragonblade
no limits as normal gamemode
Ana release:
triple tank built on mustpicks for both attackers and defenders
Useless mercy
Bayblade meta
100% healing increase
And it wasn’t fun for me when if enemy had good tracer/genji - all you can do is hope that other guys are bad, because you can’t do much against those guys.
“But skill” - you shouldn’t give value purely on skill. Each hero should have same “value”. Skill defines how big chunk of hero value (or, "reward) they can use.
It’s is not ok for hero to be op af if “it takes skill”, unless you have to have PERFECT aim, coordination, game sense and ability management to get full value of it’s kit (like Yasuo/Zed from league)
All i can agree - they shouldn’t make heroes for specific hero meta reason. They should introduce new mechanics and close gaps in current roster.
Thats why instead of making individual nerf’s you nerf the things that synergized well.
Disclaimer, there isn’t a hero I talk about I don’t love.
a couple of the biggest factors were Discord/Damage Boost, which enabled the damage to kill instead of be healed through.
The burst of the flankers.
Monkey’s Jump pack and D’Va’s Matrix.
Not in any particular order (nerf’s could be Tracer/Zen in a patcch for all it mattered) just organized this way for ease of explaining.
I would have started with a damage nerf to tracer, maybe like 20 damage over her whole clip, even if it was ‘-0.1 less damage per bullet’, and gengu’s dash would have ‘40 damage’ so 10 less.
After if that didn’t stop the kill potential, would be Discord and Damage Boost with ‘-5%’ to each.
and Finally if that didn’t increase the TTK by just enough to make other comps viable I would nerf Monkey’s Jump pack damage (-10dmg) and D’Va’s Booster damage by (-5dmg)
No individual nerf that would dumpster a hero, but in total over the whole composition would make it weaker.
Yep, s9 after they nerfed dva missiles. Game was in such a sweetspot in the ladder, you could run almost anything, if you exclude the supports (mercy too op). Then Jeff wanted to shift the meta and made his game like sh1t Now its kinda better but way less fun than back then.
The game was far from balanced before Brig. Brig isn’t even a big deal, people just blow her out of proportion and then refuse to acknowledge the facts of how to deal with her.
“Shoot her”
“SHE HAS A SHIELD!”
“Shoot the shield”
“IT’S BASICALLY INDESTRUCTIBLE”
“Soldier can destroy ~90% of it in one clip”
“… SHE HAS TEAMMATES!”
“So do you”
“SHE 1v6’S THE WHOLE TEAM”
“No she doesn’t”
“SHE’S OP ANYWAY STILL NERF”
Now its kinda better but way less fun than back then.