Yeah, a Competitive game like Overwatch should be balanced mainly around the highest levels of play… But not in any way exclusively around them…
The latter would result to nothing less than the actual death of the game, mark my words.
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Sure everyone has their biases 
I don’t see how this relates to the former… People don’t like unbalanced stomps where the only role they play is filling out the 6v6
Okay then, if you want to balance the game for 1% of your playerbase, then your playerbase will be that 1%, the rest 99% will just quit the game. That’s what you want, right?
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Top-down balancing is usually a good idea…in other games.
But in this game,neither top-down balancing nor balancing for the majority of the playerbase works,simply cause the devs are just bad.
Games should be balanced around top players but with every other tier in mind. OW doesnt have that.
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Eh they balance for both. (nerf top and for us normals)
Moira probably isnt going crazy killing flankers with top players but she will get a damage nerf of some sort.
If they were to buff bastion to be usuable by top players he would be nightmare in the lower brackets.
So nerfed for top and everyone else will leave most characters in limbo/useless.
I suppose it would be fine if they only balanced for the top players.
Reaper would have kept his 50% lifesteal.
Moira would be untouched. (maybe even buffed and kept her fade stun immunity too)
Sym’s turrets and beam might have survived I dont think they were an issue at the highest levels. etc etc etc
Except the game isn’t actually being balanced at all.
It’s selectively balanced for certain heroes to be dominant.
If it were actually being balanced for the top F tier heroes in GM would be getting huge buffs and A tier heroes nerfed. After all, performance at the top is all that matters, right?
They aren’t balancing. They’re ignoring a huge chunk of the roster since apparently those heroes aren’t allowed to be played. Read: heroes that the streamer community dislike.
It’s not balanced at all for the top.
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BUT I PAID FOR GAME $20
dev claim regret to giving genji double jump and they haven’t done anything to double jump since close beta.
I am all up for balancing around this sliver of playerbase around top, but…
Up there with good communication, coordination and general plan what to do is VAAAAASTLY different than your typical gold/plat game where is just basically deathmatch with friendlies.
Problem about this kind of balancing is non of it changed heroes skill floor. Best example was Reaper. He wasn’t viable in upperbrackets so he got buffed so much in lower ones he was just W+M1 winning machine, meanwhile back at top he still was easly shut down waste of pick.
Making game frustrating for majority of players isn’t healthy balance. Unless devs wanna fallow path of Lawbreakers.
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Can you imagine if they balanced around lower ranks? Reaper would be and was in fact nerfed into the ground 
Balancing predominately around GM and Top 500 is well and good and pretty much how it has to be. Although, lower ranks can and should still be taken into account to a certain degree.
Problem is, rather than the top of ladder, Blizzard seems to be aiming balance much more around OWL which is a totally different game from what even Top 500 is playing.
It gets problematic when they dont even balance around GM but for league only because some heroes such as Sombra become basically dead content for everyone else but the pros.
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The thing is, a game should be watchable at high ranks. Esports and high ranks are advertisements. They make people want to play the game, and to play it like those cool players do. But the game also should be playable for low-mid ranks, because they are a playerbase, they are conumers. However, OW as it is probably doesn’t bring a lot of revenue from regular players. They already bought a game and paid for it, and there’s not much to buy once the game is purchased. So I’m not really surprised they put more effort to balance the game around pros.
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no you clearly just simplfying history. her repair pack only became a problem after they decided to give her three of them because shes balanced to be healer for some stupid reason.
the orginal problem with brig was she acted more like a tank rather than a healer what with her stuns and combo, so they nerfed all that and gave her more healing which of course didnt just greatly increase goats sustain power no nobody could seen that one coming expet smart people
then they nerfed rally because it was making everyone too durable so they reduced it 100 and made it temporay
then they found out it had a bug which layered the defense potential making it reduce more damage then it was meant to after over a year of her release.
not long after this they also found that inspire and rally effects could be blocked by standing on any incline in the game very well iomplented character mechanics
then it turns out after all the nerfs she was only good goats and nowhere else and instead of going down the more fun route of returning her to more tank focused kit they went with full main healer with massively increased healing on all of her abillties.
which has caused problems to no end and repair pack only became the problem after the rework because she could have multiple and because it still gave the over heal armour which allowed her to safely give it out to flankers, which any one with a brain would figured out would been a bad thing but like always they saw it as “this will make gengi and tracer more viable hooray unless they are against me in which case this is a terrible mistake of balance”
repair pack was a better ability when it was 150 burst
Heroes don’t carry games, players carry games on a hero. A hero being able to carry really hard is not enough - you also need a player to actually do so. Those players are not really found in plat apart from smurfs. If they truly carry that hard they’ll just climb out of your rank and you won’t have to deal with them anymore.
… You don’t understand why people don’t like changes that absolutely destroy their current understanding and method of playing the character?
… no reasons or citation given, just “I don’t think it affects YOU”
OK… but what about the tens of thousands that play the game and couldn’t give a wet slap about OWL?
No, but they payed to play a game and are constantly having their favorite characters and playstyles invalidated. I’d say as an end-user product is kind of not good.
you seem to NOT understand… with your first sentence.
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Strange as it may seem changes that affect, oh 90% of the playerbase (and they most certainly do despite the egotistical stance that everyone below Diamond are mouth breathing knuckle-draggers) vs. 10% seems kind of obvious. It’s this arrogant and childish attitude that no one below mid-Diamond recognizes how kits work or how to get value out of them.
This “we know how to play the game better ergo our opinion is all that counts” philosophy might be true if we were talking a free game like Chess but we aren’t, its a paid service we buy into. As a business you cannot throw out the opinion of 50% of the playerbase and expect good things to happen to your business.
The reality is this: its not just about you in the top 6%. Even Blizzard acknowledges this that a little imbalance at both ends is necessary for everyone to enjoy the game. Stop being a selfish-prig. If anyone is missing “something bigger”, its you quite frankly.
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Guess you forgot about launch brig, the full unnerfed form of ironclad bastion, unnerfed form of reaper’s life leech, moth mercy etc.
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Most heroes are balanced at most ranks.
Tanks are what happens when you don’t consider the game below OWL.
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