To be completely fair, that applies to every hero after season 9. Everything just got so easy to land.
They had to reduce lucio’s hitbox size after season 9 as you would hit body shots when you were clearly aiming at the head
He’s historically NEVER been a bad pick. Maybe some team comps his speed boost doesn’t do much but he’s always a good hero. His “worst” is probably still better than a lot of hero’s best
That passive is “she’s eating important abilities and shots. Maybe I should swap so that my weapon isn’t rendered useless and only feeding the enemy tank’s MIT stats”
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OMG Ive been saying this for sooooo many years.
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Lucio’s PR across all SR leaves him as the 6th pick support. (3.00). In skill tier order from low to high, he is 7th, 8th, 9th, 8th, 7th, 5th and 7th. Out of 10 supports. And he only has a positive WR in Diamond and Masters -not even in GM (in fact the only support in GM with a lower WR is Lifeweaver). I know this is not a huge nerf, but it is absolutely mind boggling to me that a hero that -on paper, in ladder play, even GM,- is possibly underperforming is getting any nerf at all.
They just can’t understand Lucio’s use in this game. In ladder play, Lucio needs to play very high risk to get reward. This does not necessarily mean ‘hur dur reddit Lucio go brr’, but being up in enemy’s faces for disruption is huge for Lucio. It’s one of the best values he offers to his team in ladder play. Being able to reliable win 1v1s (which needs his KB), being able to knock enemies off himself and his team (which needs KB and is one of Lucio’s other biggest values), and having very strong lane control (also needs KB) are all what Lucio really brings to ladder play. Speed is useful, but nowhere near as useful as it is in the professional scene. You simply can not expect 5 random pugs to come together and get the same value with this hero as a set of scrimmed professional players.
Lucio’s KB is likely the most important part of his kit in ladder. Flat out. The previous tank KB change (and of course Lucio get a fairly unnecessary damage nerf to try to prevent spam…?) let Lucio do that job again. We know it did not dramatically change his PR or his WR because we can see those medium-term stats on overbuff. And perhaps this is just in my vacuum…but I very rarely hear people generally complain about Lucio’s KB (or Lucio in general, frankly). Like, sure, the rare time it actually blocks a kill or something…but for the most part? Nope. Compare that to Ana’s nade/sleep, or Suzu, or teleport, or just Mercy…like, Lucio’s SW -which he aggressively needs, is such a drop in the bucket compared to those.
So with the previous changes, Lucio was able to do his job more. Because the value was finally there again, it was finally worth it for him to make riskier plays to disrupt the enemy team -because, as we all know, SW only works in very very close range-. Lucio’s gameplay (for the first time basically since the blip of S9 before they ‘hotfixed’ him) got interesting again. He was engaging again; you could make plays, you could use his kit for more than taxiing or escaping. His risk/reward was positively adjusted.
Now that we’ve removed that…do they just want this passive playstyle again? They nerfed his damage to discourage his ‘spam’, but here they nerf what lets him make aggressive proactive plays also…so what the heck do they want this hero to do?
Back in around 2017, they soft reworked Lucio. They shrunk his aura a TON, but they gave him more individual survivability. They also, over time, shored up how his wallriding works to make it feel better. During that rework, they specifically cited that Lucio had this fun kit built on movement, but he was not rewarded for using it. He got better value just sitting back behind his team, changing songs and hitting amp, shooting a choke. When they reworked him, they wanted to up his skill ceiling, and they wanted Lucio players to get more reward for taking riskier plays using his hugely fun movement kit. Over time, this has gotten eroded away. This specific balance change, to me, leaves me asking again, ‘what do they want this hero to be’, because they are balancing him away from disruption with this change (I am not sure if the dev team is aware of that though). They are balancing him away from dueling (because he desperately needs that KB to survive, and they already nerfed his damage). They are balancing him away from spam, and because they nerfed hero KB for SW, they are balancing him away from peeling for his team for dive so…what in the world is Lucio meant to do, in ladder play? He is already, frankly, a very poorly picked here and has been so for the majority of OW2 with small blips here and there. (And the latter year or two of OW1, as well!).
I am beginning to feel like Lucio might be the first hero we see in the roster who almost exclusively viable in professional play, and just dismal in ladder play.
Yes but Space Ranger will be kawaii-uwu, so she can sell skins AND give speed! But because she is an OW2 hero, she’ll have speed AND fly AND maybe a tele AND perhaps a full heal AND maybe one of the best DPS ults in the game. But we don’t want her to be prohibitively difficult to inhibit skin sales, so make she she doesn’t need to hard aim any of those abilities.
I almost feel like if another hero offers speed, it might open the dev team’s eyes for how outdated Lucio feels in so many ways, but he has speed (which is nearly inviable outside of GM and pro play), so it all gets disregarded.
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Lucio’s damage wasn’t decreased enough to matter, and he got a sizable buff to his boop damage. He can more reliably play Reddit Lucio and combo people out of the game. That being said, it’s not entirely Lucio’s job to do damage… if you want to do more damage on support I think there are certainly better options. Supports in general do not need to be cookie cutter versions of each other. Lucio has his niche like every other support does.
The KB change for me is a worrying signal that they do not understand the purpose of this hero. It is NOT ‘reddit Lucio’ (though I think people conflagulate the playstyle). It’s ‘disruption’. Lucio is at huge risk to get up in the enemy team’s face to disrupt them. His health isn’t especially high and he has a huge hitbox (especially when he is wallriding, which he needs to do to disrupt). He is easy to kill while doing this…so the 'reward’ needs to feel worth the ‘risk’. If it is not, it’s either not worth taking this hero at all, or Lucio is much better of just sitting passivly behind his team (but he had his ‘spam’ damage nerfed). So Lucio’s interesting playstyle, what makes him unique, is rendered pointless. Like I said above; Lucio got reworked in ~2017 to encourage him to make these riskier plays. If the KB is not worth the risk to get the disruption, there is no reason to attempt it in the first place.
Lucio, in pro play, needs his speed. It’s why he is so useful. In ladder play, while speed is helpful and good in theory, his disruption is the best way to get individual team value with him (of course, speed helps with this as well).
The KB nerf, while it is nerfing a hero that I do not think needed to be nerfed, is not horrendous. Playing Lucio prior to the KB buffs felt awful, so it was nice to be able to finally do your job again, but for me it’s the total lack of comprehension for what this hero does, or a direction for what he is meant to do, in this unnecessary nerf. (Especially in the face of other support heros who are clearly over performing by comparison, and who are much more complained about, but have no actions done to them).
Point being that none of the Lucio nerfs are enough to kill the character or his overall design. It may not have been warranted, but it’s not enough to say that Lucio is a dead character in the game.
His boop is still broken and easily one of the best abilities in the game. Repositioning tanks is always going to be valuable. More valuable than most of the utility in the game. I am not salty at all!
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If it makes you feel better, I absolutely never would boop a Roadhog as he hooks in my teammate. So like don’t even worry man, come a little closer nothing bad will happen. Let’s go hang out by the Ilios well sometime 
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Lucio, more than perhaps any other hero in the game, is dramatically different ladder -even t500- play from pro play. So with that in mind…Lucio is just not a good ladder pick. Is he fun? Does he have a great design and huge skill ceiling? Yeah. But if there is no incentive to use the hero in ladder play, in the end, it’s not a well designed hero, is it?
So does this kill the hero? Of course not. But Lucio is, even before this nerf, not a good ladder pick at all to begin with, and thats in any SR frankly. I’m not one to say ‘oh, we need compensation buffs!’ but in this case, I feel like if they do not want Lucio to have this disruption playstyle, they need to start pushing him in another direction, because without that, he is a passive bot behind his team to get optimal value (and that value is not great in ladder play, either!). So it’s not so much about power loss for the hero as much as identity crisis. (Especially because Lucio’s rework was to steer him into risk/reward disruption!)
As far as I can tell, and I did no dramatic testing or anything, just with my casual eyes, this nerf to Lucio’s KB is basically to bring him in line with the other support KBs -Illari’s jump and Brig’s CW both seem to do basically the same distance, with Zen’s snap-kick doing a modicum less. I’m fine with that in theory, but Lucio’s SW puts him at significant more risk to use than Illari’s or Brig’s. Brig’s can be used from a safe distance with effectiveness, and Illari’s is a no-aim 360 sphere that also relocates her. So Lucio is going to be in more danger than the two of them to do his job.
I just think this was a poorly thought out change to be honest, and it really highlights that no one on the team really plays this hero (which I already knew as a fact anyway, but it’s nice to see it highlighted). I’ve been thinking lately that Lucio needs to have some of his strength laterally moved around (though not as badly as Mercy needs this), but I was withholding much though tuntil Space Ranger comes out, to see what a (likely) comparable kit is like. But I am feeling it highlighted here; Lucio is a very outdated hero (but with a fun, strong and interesting kit!) for OW2’s ladder play. I’m not sure what I would do to make him feel better for ladder since it obviously can not be a buff, because his professional play is so strong.
The projectile increase where better for other heroes was actually more of a nerf for Lucio. His ability to hit heads got significantly more difficult as where you would previously aim for the head and be relatively consistent, now hitting anywhere besides their forehead counts it as a bodyshot first. (i.e. the lower half of your shot has to hit the enemy’s forehead)
All of that half a centimeter I boop the tank is sure going to make a difference. Lucio’s kit is designed to counter do nothing but hold W key gameplay as well as to enable his team to do just that, them nerfing boop takes away half of his character’s design and it just feels bad to play him now. My suggestion is boop shouldn’t be nerfed and players should learn map design and positioning better.
It is a lot more than that. You should try playing Lucio!
To be fair, I do not mind it against most heroes. Just buff Reinhardt’s boop resistance and I am happy.
This is absolutely not true. Lucio lost the ability to combo kill in the S9 changes…it simply no longer exists.
Because the range of boop is so much less than his projectile damage AND it is significantly higher risk, plus the fact that it doesn’t crit, it was a bad tradeoff all the way around and a net nerf for anyone with decent aim.
Finally, damage is ABSOLUTELY in Lucio’s wheelhouse, it is a core part of his identity.
The only change I’d really care about with Lucio is if there are ways to enforce him staying near allies more often. I’m not really a huge fan of the yeet into the enemy team style of play. Its clearly effective if you are good enough and smurfing people usually.
Maybe give him a minor buff to speed or healing with allies nearby than simply isolated alone. That’s really all I care about in regards to his power level. Make the team play aspect more generally powerful than the yeet into the enemy team aspect. Or somehow make that style of play less effective.
Only zarya and sym arent majorly effected by dva. Defense matrix is oppressive to nearly all other dps and tanks.
Professional play and ranked games are not two different things. They are both playing the same game. There are no hidden stats in professional play that make playing with your team better. So the most important part of playing your role as a support is your team composition. Your team composition dictates how you will play your role. Anything other than that is strictly done for content. This means the only difference between ranked and professional play is coordination. If Lucio can work in coordinated play, then he can work in any other environment. Therefore the issue with Lucio has never had anything to do with his kit. So the nerfs, as minuscule as they are, have almost no impact on Lucio as a character in the game.