I see your logic, but maybe he was legit weak and they just overbuffed him 
He was perceived to be weak, but he wasnt actually weak. Which is why after they buffed him he is OP, because he actually was doing fine before.
7 Likes
a hero in overwatch is considered in a good state when they have around 50% winrate with a stable pickrate in this game
1 Like
Alright, rereading the op if I am not mistaken, your view of balance seems to be based on raw data. A heroās average performance shouldnāt be too far off the scale compared to everyone else, or too low.
If you could, give me an example of what overpowered, underpowered, and what the average should be for your view of balance.
Viability of course is a relative term. The game is balanced when the the total difference in stats between the strongest heroes is very close to the worst performing heroes. For instance, Genjis current stats would be fine if the worst comparable dps would be only slightly below that.
For a lot of people balance means that their hero is simply more powerful, more likely to win and should never need to switch. Yet theyāll still say that their hero is more difficult so that makes it ok.
They dismiss anything, including data, that contradicts this view. Itās the only way they can hold onto their clearly contradictory positions.
6 Likes
Ah, thanks for saying that, because hereās the cold hard truth, no hero is going to ever be truly balanced by that measurement.
How effective a hero is, is entirely dependent on whatās being played at the time. If for example Rein is the #1 tank being played, other Supports and Damage that compliment that hero will also likely be played often. Hero synergy is the backbone of a composition, and if said synergy is so strong that the enemy canāt come up with a consistent counter, thatās how you get a meta.
Thatās why my views on balance are fundamentally different from yalls. I am not interested in the data because it change at the flip of a coin, I am more interested as to how and why certain things happen. If thereās a Push then where is the equal and opposite Pull?
Ideally, Metas should cycle out on their own without any dev interference. One strat will be played a couple weeks, then a new strat will counter it, become meta, then the cycle repeats. We should be reasonably able to pick an under utilized strat that nobody has seen in a long time or has been done before, and it works if weāre skilled or smart enough.
We really do not have this in Overwatch, often times something stays the optimum strategy for months on end, because of the interactions between heroes and their mechanics. The design of Overwatchās heroes do not allow for risk and skill to play a major part in how effective things are. Too lenient, too easy to pick up and play, too forgiving. That is a common thing I see with this game, and itās why I want to change how things are designed vs simply buffing and nerfing, and having this nonstop cycle of problems.
The game will always have a meta, thats true. But there is still a difference in balance if a meta is uncontested or the non meta is only slightly worse than the meta. Again, viability is relative. Iām not looking at stats total, Iām looking at the difference in stats between the best heroes and the worst. This is not about to prevent having 1 strat be dominant, but to regulate by how much.
Well, often times the worst heroes are the most niche, or require far more work from their team to get the value.
In other words Codependent heroes, I donāt think we can really fix that with simple number adjustments.
You could improve on that by either making the heroes more independent or make the cooperation easier.
1 Like
True, but then you get heroes like Ashe and Genji, who are good on their own, and scale up with the team synergy.
I think another thing to consider is how people view damage heroes to be honest, Supports and Tanks CAN carry, but typically not without their team working with them. This is where Damage heroes can differ, they can carry even if their team isnāt so great. So they get called overpowered when their role really is just about killing things, and doing it as intended. 
nono, devs balance the game now around moneeehhhhh~~~
1 Like
Again, I think we need to get away from balancing around feelings. Because fundamentally, feelings arent interested in balance, but their own personal fun.
This goes hand in hand. When more people like to see Genji played, then buffing him into the meta gives them more viewership for OWL and more money as a result.
I was coming in this thread to post literally something similar to this.
Luckily, there are other men of culture on these forums.
They called him trash because they could not easily walk all over certain supports, namely Moira and Brig. Genkus think in MUH SKILL terms and therefore they feel entitled to easy kills without any resistance - which is quite ironic.
It would have been fine, this sort of behavior seems normal for a lot of genku mains. The problem started when Blizzard began listening to that very loud and annoying minority.
2 Likes
Hereās a stat for you Blizzard said they react to meta and balance issues faster.
The Genji buff was a big one and now you have a Genji in almost every game and how does Blizzard reactā¦ nerfing and buffing other heroes without comment.
I think it is just they donāt balance at all. If they truly cared about balance they would lock ya what enables certain things and tweak them.
Look at hanzo during grav dragon meta. The nano for his dragon was nerfed because it was so strong and reliable with targets being stuck in grav. So they stopped nano from being beneficial to him. Why not do the same to gengi? With his kills his dash is reset constantly so he has high dps and movement during his ult. The problem is nano blade is really disproportionately strong compared to other ults in the game. Yes it requires to ults to pull off but this ults are charged relatively fast when you look at how often the combo is up during almost every team fight.
Nano/blade was always like that. It was strong but it wasnt too strong since Genji as a whole wasnt OP. They buffed him into being overpowered and only now people complain about nano/blade even though they didnt touch that combo at all since game release.
The problem isnt his Ult, the buffs simply werent warranted and need to be reverted.
Genji has a problem with being the ācoolestā looking hero, and also the strongest/highest skill cap hero.
As a result, hordes of players are drawn to him. Majority of these players are bad, and dont have the microskill to play Genji at a level where he feels strong. But the people who do have the microskill to play Genji effectively are overperforming because the hero is overpowered, and is allowed to be overpowered because the hordes of bad players playing him for his aesthetics are plummeting his stats, and convoluting forums with inaccurate depictions of the state of Genji.
Stat wise he was doing fine. The problem is that even GM players are delusional to what is actually happening in the game. Harbleu is one of the people for exampel which made fun of the devs when they revealed the winrate for Genji and Soldier in GM which contradicted their general sentiment that they sucked.