Season 4 introduced a relatively major change to Brigitte’s ultimate ability intended to give it a more immediate impact. Setting aside the Barrier Shield for a moment, this means that Brigitte gains for herself 100 Armor instantly, instead of 300 Overhealth over 10 seconds. While the Armor has greater potential to save her from immediate danger, it certainly doesn’t sustain her as well as the Overhealth did. Because of this and the fact that popping ultimate abilities paints a target on one’s back, Brigitte need to hold her Barrier Shield up a lot more than before lest she succumb to focused fire.
In order to compensate for Brigitte’s lesser innate survivability, the Barrier Shield had its hit points increased by 150% for the duration of Rally. On the other had it is also approximately 150% wider as well, meaning it is likely to take more fire. As such, it is not obvious whether this is a buff or a nerf to its effective uptime. Though, in my experience it does seem to be a buff.
As a player who mostly plays support, Brigitte especially so, I generally find Season 4 Rally would be more interesting than its predecessor, were it not for essentially being relegated to Barrier duty once the initial Armor boost get chewed through. Overall, the Season 4 ultimate has a greater potential to make plays. That being said, I would like to see some changes implemented to make Rally a bit more interactive.
These changes aim to trade some of her immediate survivavility for sustained survivability and provide her with greater incentive to not just hold up the Barrier Shield. In addition, some changes to her movement speed and Shield Bash to allow Brigitte to quickly reposition around the beginning of Rally and to enable reactive plays with the stun Shield Bash gains during Rally.
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Rally
- Brigitte’s extra armor during Rally reduced from 100 to 75.
- Repair Pack used during Rally now also grants 25 Overhealth to the targetted ally for 5 seconds. Using Repair Pack on the same ally again within the duration will refresh the Overhealth pool to 25 Overhealth for 5 seconds. (i.e. does not stack with itself)
- Shield Bash used during Rally now also grants 25 Overhealth to all allies within line of sight and 8.5 meters of Brigitte for 5 seconds.
- Overhealth cap from Rally itself reduced from 100 to 75. Overhealth which would exceed the cap now replace the Overhealth pool from Rally with the shortest remaining duration, instead of being omitted entirely.
- Brigitte now heals herself equal to 10% of all Overhealth granted to allies.
- On activation, Rally now reduces the remaining cooldown of Shield Bash by 2 seconds.
- Shield Bash is now excluded from the ability lockout during the cast time of Rally.
- The speed buff of Rally is now +25% for the first 3 seconds of Rally and +15% for the remainder of the duration, instead of +15% throughout.
- The movement penalty of Barrier Shield reduced from -30% to -15% during Rally.
- On activation, Rally now triggers Inspire.
- During Rally, Inspire now also instantly grants 1.5 seconds worth of recharging to Repair Pack.
13 Likes
I ain’t reading all that, but allegedly the armor Brigitte gets during her ult is bugged and it doesn’t reduce the damage properly or even makes her take extra damage or something like that
6 Likes
The way I heard it, Rally effectively gives Brigitte, even though it looks like 100 Armor, 50 extra Health and 50 extra Armor, instead of the intended 100 Armor. I haven’t tested it myself though.
Even so, I still think my arguments hold.
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I agree that she needs some major changes, they basically gutted her in order to give her a stun again. But I think the changes you suggested are way too overcomplicated and unnecessary. Her old ultimate was perfect, it just needed a small boost like increased sheild HP (NOT size) or the stun if Blizz felt the need to go that far. Personally, I think the stun is nice but unnecessary. I’d rather have the movement and overhealth than stun.
4 Likes
If the fix the armor bug, and make the armor stick around like overhealth does for allies after the rally ends, she should be in a decent spot. Still would like the pack range back.
Yeah, I have to be very careful or I die!
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No, that’s not enough. The armor bug is a difference of like, 20-odd HP. It basically only matters against pulse bomb IF you’re already at full health and even then you’ll still only survive with 14 HP. Which means tracer can literally walk up to you fearlessly and melee you to death while you helplessly hold up your oh so powerful 750 sheild.
While I agree she should retain any additional HP after rally ends just like her teammates, the armor never survives rally anyways because there’s no constant HP regen.
What she needs is constant HP Regen. Armor, HP, Overhealth, it doesn’t matter. But nothing will change until she gets HP regen back.
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Meanwhike in QP…mh team gets spawncamped and trolled by a single duo pair of Brig and Lucio as her healing.
You were saying?
That’s not a Brig or a Lucio issue… that’s a team issue.
4 Likes
If you say so. Brig on the team…suddenly super hard to dive. She went from suicidal support that require nuiance to a battering ram with her new ulti.
I think they should make rally give regenerating armor to you and your allies. You know, something like how it was in O1 
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Haven’t even played Brig in ranked yet but still going to complain about her changes. Blizz plz
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I love it. My only comment is: instead of generating 25 team OH on SB, what if 15% of her damage dealt during Rally is converted to team OH? For ref, her SB, flail + WS combo on a single target would yield 23.25 OH. But she’d now have a lot more opportunity to create more OH with other combos, hitting multiple enemies at a time with flail or SB (would pair well with grav, blizzard, shatter and terra), and she could be damage boosted for additional OH generation.
I think you could keep the cap at 100 too, since she’s doing continuous work to maintain that OH. Could maybe lose the OH from RP though, since it might make OH from combos feel redundant and less impactful? Just an idea.
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@NerfHEDSHOTs: Her new ult makes no such changes, and is only a total of about 20 seconds of her entire game time. Her ult has pretty much zero to do with her defending frequent dives.
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She stuns…then that shield stops a lot of dps. Like you realize her shield becomes Reinhardt’s shield size right?
I honestly agree, I don’t understand why the sniper gets to snipe but the armor specialist cant provide armor
3 Likes
Brig is easier to dive now than ever. She has to play closer to the fight the entire game, limiting her options for safety while still providing value to her team with repair packs and inspire. This is just her neutral state, regardless of the ultimate.
She’s definitely easier to dive during her ultimate now more than ever. Her burst of armor sounds nice, but it can also be bursted down just as easily. Before, she had 150hp + 50 armor + 300 overhealth during rally for a total of 521hp over the 10 seconds duration of Rally, and carryover any additional overhealth for 20 seconds. Now, she has 150hp + 50 armor + a one time burst of 100 armor for a total of 364hp that disappears the instant rally ends, assuming you even have any left.
She is relying solely on inspire (or afk sheildbotting) to keep herself alive. That’s only 15hp/sec! Once her armor is gone, it’s gone unless she’s pocketed. And if she’s being pocketed, then do what you always do with a pocketed character and target their pocket. Brig only gets 1 or 2 stuns if she times it right. They’re easy to bait out, and insignificant even if you are caught by it. Even Doom and WB are barely affected by her stun. It’s primary existence is for interrupting ultimates and other abilities like Vape or whatnot. It’s not a sigma or rein stun, it functions more like sombra’s hack.
The other option that people will soon learn and I pray will inspire another rework, is to just kite her. She has no mobility outside of bash, and her speed is still debuffed while sheilding during rally. Just spray cover fire and run the opposite direction. Most heroes shouldn’t be in bash/melee range of brig anyways unless she’s being aggressive herself, so she really shouldn’t be catching you off guard with her ult either in most cases. Any heroes that should normally be in melee range, Primarily tanks but situationally certain dps (divers, mei, sym) either have the ability to outduel her easily with high damage, high mobility, or high survivability (often a combination), OR are generally unaffected by the stun, with exceptions to specific abilities. (See my section on baiting out the stun in my last paragraph)
But I’m telling you, diving Brig is actually the counter to Rally. She dies and so does all her teams heals and overhealth.
6 Likes
I don’t believe you. I play a lot of Winston and Ball…she is one of thsoe targets that nullify all of the damage done while chipping at me.
So what are my options to deal with her? Poke her? Bait her towards me and try diving them? Do I need to bait the whipshot too?
You can say you don’t believe me as much as you want, but I’m just giving you the facts.
No, you can’t just expect to int on her and win. You still have to use your smarts to take advantage of opportunity just like literally any other encounter. Yes, you still have to break her sheild, or bait out stun, or try and take a good angle, etc.
Just remember. If she’s sheilding, she’s doing nothing else. She might have inspire going, but otherwise she’s providing no real value. Try pressuring her sheild then diving because if her sheild breaks, she has no mitigation AND no mobility.
Honestly play her for a week and then tell me how strong you think she is, even against Doom and WB, ESPECIALLY Winston.
Winston’s attacks have a cleave effect. They not only damage her through her barrier, but damage the barrier as well. Plus you can bubble her off to cut off her inspire and repair packs from her teammates. If you struggle against Brig as Winston then I have no advice to give you tbh.
