I wouldn’t dismiss that too quickly.
The dev’s admitted she was made to end dive…
Dive only played in the high ranks.
Therefore, Brig was made for high ranked players.
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True, but I remember most support players on old forums complaining about the lack of peel and or actual abilities to fight back against dps players, and for good reason. I think moira is pretty healthy in that regard
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Oh, totally. I think having heroes to switch to was a very good idea.
I think the game should be balanced around hero skill requirements, but, that leads to places, which, while I am comfortable with, many are not.
Strangely, you don’t even need to work out which heroes are high or low skill for it to work.
So, you can stop the “high or low skill” arguments around heroes, because, regardless, of if a hero is high or low skill, the outcomes on what it looks like on the ladder is the same.
Which is good, because, if it was otherwise, you would have endless fights over if a hero is high or low skill, rather than where they should be.
Here is the basic setup.
If a hero is high skill, then low ranked players should struggle with them, and high ranked players should get a lot of value from them.
Which means, they should be good in high ranks, and conversely bad in low ranks, since, if they are good in low ranks, it is because they are OP, and no longer hard for people to get value out of.
likewise, low skill heroes should be good in low ranks, and do poorly in high ranks.
if they are good in high ranks, it is because they are OP, and you get value from them regardless of their base skill.
Mid ranks heroes are the same, where they should be good in mid, but not good in high or low.
Now…
This means, you buff or nerf a hero, until they are good in one and only one range.
You don’t need to DECIDE up front if they are high or low skill, since which rank they end up good in gives you that answer rather than people arguing it out.
In other terms, the RMS of their “goodness” should be the same for all heroes. Some will be pretty damn average across many ranks, and some which are “high, low or mid skill” will peak in their respective areas.
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Because we are the reason this game exists. We pay the majority of what makes this game persistently profitable. If we are not happy the game dies.
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Yes they do. Now, I’m not saying all of their opinions are valid, because they definitely do possess less understanding of the game than higher rank players, but if there are changes being made that very negatively impact their rank youre damn right they have a say.
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No. You haven’t provided any proof anymore than I have.
Anyway the developers explicitly teased her as meta-changing new hero on the old forums before her relase, before we even knew which hero would be released. That was their design goal to change the dive meta.
They were asked in the Q&A about how she was designed to accomplish this goal and they said this
She was explicitly designed to help weaken the dive meta at high ranks
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They also agreed afterwards that releasing a hero specifically to end a meta was a bad idea after it 
But, yeah, was designed for a purpose, and that purpose wasn’t DIRECTLY to help low ranked players.
That said, I think making a hero which gives people a switch target so they are not countered by the same hero each game was a good idea.
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Yup. I’m not arguing Brigitte was a good or bad idea. But that she was explicitly designed for high rank concerns about dive meta. Every single aspect of her kit back then was anti-dive. I do not believe high ranked players had Brigitte in mind when they asked for a counter to Tracer.
Doesn’t change that this was Blizzard listening to them
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Jeoff never says anything about it being designed to shake up the meta for pro play, in fact he was terribly inaccurate and she successfully rendered any dive comp useless with just a single switch instead of a team comp switch
Yep.
I think you are both kinda agreeing.
Just where the balance point is around “needing a good switch target for supports” and needing a counter to dive.
I mean, she does do both, and in many respects, they are very similar tasks.
He responds to a question about an old statement he made. Did you pay attention to the question?
“How is this supposed to be meta changing?”
The earlier statement has since been removed but anyone being honest can tell from the response which meta is being referred to
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No. He claims she was designed for low rank concerns. She was not. She was designed to help with weakening dive meta which dominanted league and gm and was non-existent in low ranks
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Yea I agree, I think she was made with lower ranks in mind too, due to how accessible she was. It doesn’t seem like the design was made to really be a character that high ranks used. Its why geoff said she would help in anti dive, while being a pick you could switch to if you have tracer or genji problems in your backline.
This hero’s super solid and after a play test we we we always hear the comment like yeah that’s an Overwatch hero that’s gonna feel really great. So it’s progressing awesome and teams actually working overtime on the hero now and they’re working really hard.
But I think everybody’s gonna be really excited. I think it will be meta changing . I will go ahead and say that, so yeah.
Found someone who posted his exact comment from Reddit. Apparently it was an interview with Jeff Kaplan about Overwatch league mostly by Freedo.
You can’t just say because her mechanics are simple it must be for low ranks. Winston also has simple mechanics and he’s for high ranks too. The design goals is what determines that. Moira was made for lower ranks but Brigitte was made for higher ranks. She was specifically intended to shake up dive meta, a purely high rank concern.
This was them listening to high rank feedback which is why he trolled them by telling them to be careful what they wished for
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As they shouldn’t. My lower ranked friends say Bastion and Sym are OP.
Imagine someone who hasn’t been to college complaining they aren’t being taken seriously when they provide suggestions for the international space station design.
A lack of expertise by definition means you don’t have a valuable opinion. This isn’t trying to be mean- this is how real life works. Become an expert if you want your opinion to be taken seriously- this applies to anything.
This is a video game, not astrophysics. A consumer product, which yes, all the consumer opinions are valuable. And an opinion should be evaluated by it’s own merits, not just who speaks it. An expert is obviously more likely to be correct than amateur, doesn’t make all amateur opinions automatically without merit.
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100% low ranked players have a say in the game balance. I wasn’t sure we did but then we demanded Roadhog be nerfed a month ago. He was destroying lower ranks after they nerfed the other tanks. The rebellion was enormous and there was much anger, wailing and gnashing of teeth because even in silver you had to play him. It was that crazy. Not even silver Bastions could stop him. 
He got nerfed a week later. Now it is true, the higher ranks were mad as well but not as mad as us. Because Roadhog was obliterating everything. He is ok now. Roadhog mains can make him work but not everyone can hop on him and destroy entire back lines like they used to.
Without us, you’d be knee deep in the Hog meta.
Also I gotta say Bastion isn’t really a problem anymore in silver and gold. It has taken 4 years but most teams despatch him pretty easily now. That wasn’t the case even a year ago but it is now.
As for Brig, it wasn’t the players in silver and gold who came up with goats and broke the game. If anything Moira was always better than Brig in the lower ranks and a lot of people would rather play Mercy. Brig was never that popular below plat because we couldn’t exploit her armour in the way that better players could.
In truth, the differences in game balance between lower and higher ranks can be overstated. For instance I play Bap in gold and he isn’t very good. It turns out he isn’t great in GM either. Most Bap mains regardless of rank want him buffed. There are quite a few heroes like this that are the same throughout the ranks.
So, we kick the non game dev’s off the balancing threads? I mean, we could do that, there is enough of us left that we could still have chats over it.
But like, player feedback is super important.
Or to put it another way you don’t need to be a chief to know the food tastes terrible.
Anyway… PSA, people who give feedback have a VERY real say in game balancing, those who can give well thought out arguments around it especially so.
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As someone who is terrible at this game I pretty much agree. I have no say in how this game should be balanced because I do not know how to play it at a high level and never will. However the competitive system as a whole is straight up garbage and -should- get an overhaul in OW2. Really and truthfully when us casuals can spam play PVE in OW2 a lot of inherent issues in the pvp should be resolved quite easily.