I like the idea of these changes, they reward Brigitte for playing well, landing shots, and catching flankers out of position. If she manages to land a whip shot on a flanker or if the flanker gets too close, herself and all her allies within range will be healed; she can no longer effortlessly and lethally punish flankers. This feels much closer to how she should work, it is also good because it allows her to halt a flank without only requiring the player to roll their face across the keyboard. She has a higher reward for skill dependent actions. This is the beginning of Brigitte’s transformation into a much more skill dependent hero. To make that vision come to fruition, there are still some things about her kit that do not fit well and should be changed.
Brigitte still has another ability in her kit that can easily shut down flankers with very minimal skill or effort, this is her Repair Pack that deals 150 healing and up to 75 armor that also instant heals and locks onto allies. This is one of the most powerful healing abilities on Overwatch with the potential to instantly shut down most attacks every 6 seconds, being one of the most powerful healing abilities on Overwatch it needs to require more than having the player vaguely look at their ally and press a button.
Make this healing ability a projectile that is thrown, exactly how Torbjorn’s armor packs were given. It is even possible that Brigitte should require scrap to make her healing packs, but since Overwatch is being made into a much more fast-paced game, a scrap requirement could be a bad idea. The healing output of Repair Pack would not change, it will still do 150 healing with up to 75 armor. Changes involve the Repair Pack becoming a tossed item that can be picked up by Brigitte’s allies. The Repair Pack can currently go through shields too, and since projectiles cannot go through enemy barriers, it makes sense not to allow her new Repair Pack to go through them either. Stacking Repair Packs every six seconds in between fights would be extremely broken, so every new repair pack she spawns in needs to cause the old one to be removed from the world.
Changing Brigitte’s Repair Pack to a throwable item will make her require more skill to play, and it also raises her skill ceiling. Normally, if Brigitte wants to heal an ally they need to be in her line of sight, having it be throwable will allow Brig players to heal allies outside of their line of sight with well-thrown Repair Packs.
Brigitte was made with an extremely good concept in mind and I only think that parts of her kit could fit better within Overwatch’s sandbox.
I doubt that so many players want to #DeleteBrig, I think a lot only want her in a better position with respect to other heroes.
This change is a nerf to her easiness and a buff to her potential.
Repair pack is the only other healing ability she has if she isn’t dealing damage.
Setting it to be a throwable item would be an issue since other teammates could accidently pick it up.
It would be a mess with a nerf concept like this to Brigitte.
A buff to Repair Pack’s cooldown would make playing flankers even more of a tedious job. The pre-nerf effortless Shield Bash was most powerful when used to bully the enemy frontline, the current effortless Repair Packs are used to bully backline flankers by instantly healing targeted backline allies causing the enemy flanker to retreat for a few seconds. Six seconds already leaves a pretty small window to kill enemy backline targets, and any buff to Repair Pack’s cooldown would make Brigitte’s backline effectively invincible.
Many players only saw Shield Bash as the problem,
but it is not the only issue.
Shield Bash is not the only reason why so many players hate playing against Brig and before its nerf, it was much more annoying. The current Repair Pack is just as bad as pre-nerf Shield Bash. Shield Bash was an easy ability that could shut down so many things on the frontline with minimal effort, Repair Pack is the same because of how effortlessly and easily it shuts down enemy flankers in the backline with its powerful healing.
This Repair Pack rework is less of a nerf and more of a quality change for people playing against Brigitte, it balances the skill and effort requirement. It also allows Brig to give Repair Packs to allies she could not have saved without line of sight.
I agree with you, Brigitte should still be able to fend off flankers with an equal amount of skill and effort that flankers put into flanking.
the buff to RP pack that I would do is make it trigger inspire centered on the person who got healed by RP. That way you can heal your whole team outside of combat, and increases Brig’s over all healing.
Maybe it would be a weaker version of inspire like shorter duration or cant stack with regular inspire idk, but she needs something to let her heal more than one person every 6 seconds while out of combat - this would also allow her to play bodyguard with backline supports like ana without her just doing nothing most of the match
Reducing her repair pack heal to 100 but decreasing its cooldown to 5 and make it activate inspire would be an ideal change for her. Makes her more supportive with heals.
I like this idea because it removes much of Repair Pack’s instant shut down potential and replaces it with spread out passive healing, it would require Brig players to peel for the backline in addition to using Repair Pack, instead of just turning around and instant healing their ally for 150HP and potentially 75 armor.
The cooldown for the Inspire Repair Packs might need to be increased a bit or the “Inspire” effect time of the Repair Pack should remain less than its cooldown so Brigitte cant stack inspiration on multiple allies.
Tbh these healing changes arent as impactful as some believe. Her passive resets every time she hits an enemy, and it doesn’t stack. This means you will continually reset the passive and will be getting the same amount of healing most of the time. Imo the only time these changes will show is when the fight is over, even then the main healer can clean everything up. A change that (imo) would increase brigs effectiveness as a HEALER instead of a TANK would be to decrease the health and armor given from 75 each to 50 each, and move it to 4 sec cooldown. This would make it easier to play against her and increase her reliability. What do you guys think could make brig more impactful as a healer and less of a tank?
I think it is important for her to be effective as both a tank and a healer, the devs have stated that being a hybrid tank/healer was one of their visions for her.
The problems lie with how much some of her abilities do for each hybrid role for the amount of effort they require.
Inspire and Rocket Flail are okay right now since it is just a combat-triggered passive ability that helps keep her allies alive during team-fights in response to Brigitte entering combat with her Rocket Flail or Whip Shot.
This doesn’t require much effort which is okay because it has a subtle impact without the potential to shut down skill dependant attacks from enemy players.
Repair Pack is not okay right now because it is both low skill and very high impact. Notice how with Inspire and Rocket Flail, each is balanced with respect to the effort and skill the player needs to put into them. Inspire is a low effort and low skill ability with a subtle reward, Rocket Flail is low effort and low skill ability with a small range and forgiving damage.
Making Repair Pack either low skill with less impact or high skill with high impact would be a good start for balancing Brigitte’s hybrid roles.
Whip Shot is okay right now since it is a skill dependent CC ability that can be used to make space and defend allies. It requires skill and provides a larger impact.
Barrier Shield is perfect where it is, it takes me less than 10 seconds to break it as Tracer when I need to pressure Brigitte.
It is balanced to allow Brigitte to briefly flex onto a tank role when needed.
Shield Bash was broken but its changes have it in a good spot now. It was not appropriate for Brigitte to lethally punish flankers with minimal skill or effort. It also let her effortlessly make a ton of room on the front and effortlessly peel for allies in the back, these were high impact actions for a small skill requirement.
The changes to it require Brigitte to put more skill and planning into her offense on the frontline and defense on the backline.
I think that it is important for her to remain an effective support/tank hybrid. I also think that it is important for her abilities’ impact to be directly related to the amount of skill and effort they take.
Because Brigitte is a support/tank hybrid, not a DPS hero. If she is going to be healing, getting kills, and acting like a tank, it all needs to require more effort, that is why Geoff Goodman’s changes encourage this. It is good for her to help her allies by peeling for her backline and fending off flankers with shield bashes and whip shots, but not for her to easily lethally punish enemy flankers with cheesy 1-shot combos.
The Shield Bash + Rocket Flail + Whip Shot 1-shot combo was a powerful and easy shutdown ability and her current Repair Pack is no different, that is why RP needs to change too.
I also want to add this quote to show an example of another player who thinks that Brigitte is supposed to be a low skill and high reward DPS/TANK/SUPPORT hybrid in order for her to be effective.
This hero is a support with the ability to briefly act as a tank to peel for allies. None of Overwatch’s supports should revolve around left clicking aimlessly and getting kills, using cheesy 1-shot combos on enemies, or spamming extremely powerful zero-aim healing abilities every six seconds. It is completely necessary for an ability’s required skill to be directly related to its impact.
Brigitte players cannot expect her to be powerful with no skill requirement. But they do expect this because they do not understand that all of those Tracer heads they bashed in with the cheesy 1-shot combo practiced Tracer for hours on end just to be met with that ability. They believe that they should be able to have the same power as those Tracer players without any of the effort it took to get that power. They are no different than the people who come onto these forums just to complain about belonging at grandmaster when they are in gold.