The way I see it
- High ELO doesn’t like dealing with oneshots from a generalist hero that’s very mobile, evasive, area denial against pursuers, with a slim hurtbox that zigzags all over the place with ADAD spam.
- Middle ELO, Was barely every landing those headshots and had a weak winrate on the hero.
- Low ELO, Was barely every landing those headshots and had a weak winrate on the hero.
It’s like there’s some dev or weird Kotick thing going on where they don’t particularly care how her design impacts the Ladder players.
They really just need to pick either high ELO or Middle ELO on the character, then balance accordingly.
I.e. Glass Canon, or Doesn’t have a oneshot without her Ult
I’m sure she is the idea of some kottick goon, to put a apex hero in the game and say she attracts them.
I’m also inclined to think she does attract a bit of that crowd.
I would cap her rail to 100 dmg no hs and give it a bhoop like Orissa spear were if it nails someone to wall it does +50 dmg.
Also put it on a cd 7 secs.
I would let her ult one shot.
Is it not obvious that they’re trying to balance for all three?
But it’s not possible to do that with a ranged instakill character.
It’s like slamming your head against a wall, until the wall breaks.
I.e. Nothing good will happen from it, you’ll probably get injured doing it, and people will thing you got problems.
I don’t think they want to balance that way, like specific to a rank of players. Probably why they keep mobility, rate of fire or charge rate (mainly on ultimate), the hitbox scaling, improving primary, etc.
Lets assume the hero is focused on being only good with Railgun if you can aim at the highest tiers of players, and we accept that anyone below diamond probably wont get much out of her unless they practice aiming consistency and climb hard. What would they have to reduce for the high end of players?
My guess is making the primary gun very weak, lowering health, lowering rate of fire, or lowering mobility. One of these or a mix of these are possible, maybe to a varying degree. Then they have to consider is she in a position that doesn’t merely replace a Widowmaker or an Ashe who are probably more focused on ranged shots. How or in what manner do they create that space for hero variety or player expression with their preferred hero?
It would be difficult either way. I think they’re just trying to stick to somewhere in between where it has some tools for low ranked players using the primary, with a chance to using railgun if they can aim; but the gun is not that good at high end compared to a soldier so they have the railgun for them, or the mobility? Either way, I’m not so sure. If it were up to me I would play with the effectiveness of the slide or something to that effect if they really want to keep her one shots but idk. I have railgun ideas that dont one shot but it would require some mechanical or visual reworks (like big lasers that pierce but are on cd type thing as it would look cool).
Their main argument kept being “not performing bellow masters”
Sojourn is the prime example why heroes shouldn’t be balanced for low elo.
Meanwhile imagine if the balance team actually spent the same amount of time on balancing other heroes as they spent on trying to keep sojourn strong.
They basically bent over backwards and tried to play mind games with the community for two seasons now, just to keep sojourn strong, while no other hero got the fraction of the same treatment.
I think they could just make the non-ult railgun not headshot, and make the rail more similar to a Soldier rocket as a finisher, not an instakill.
Or alternatively drop her down to 150hp with a faster slide cooldown.
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Trust me, sojourn doesn’t need any compensatory buffs on whatever nerfs she gets. They’ve been doing that since they started “nerfing” her and it got us nowhere, she’s still where she was when ow2 released.
Or they could stick to not increasing beam size with charge.
This isn’t about balance, or logic. This about Blizzard being too out of touch with the player-base to think of a good, balanced kit that people will play because it’s fun (as opposed to free SR) and then baby-raging when we don’t like their trash new DPS hero. Standard strat is to say you can’t change things because, ‘it’s part of their identity.’
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Agreed. Outside of ult remove one shot headshots with a Mercy boost. However they want to achieve that idc. With an ult, fine, one shot headshot awa with mercy boost or not. It DM.
I think she’s balanced for the people who just want to shoot at things. And because of that, they’re afraid to nerf her and drive them away. After all, who’d buy a moba inspired shooter where shooting isn’t the most important thing in the game?
That question is sarcastic, by the way. The answer is “Each and every last person who bought Overwatch and turned it into a critical and commercial success”. Yet for some reason they think OW2 has to push away from Moba inspired gameplay and MMORPG inspired characters.
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They could just have a .25-.5 second charge up time on the railgun shot itself, combined with an audio cue, extend the duration of her ult to compensate.
It would be 10x easier to dodge it (headshot) if I know it was about to come out in .3-.5 seconds.
At this point am I convinced the reason she is allowed to stay strong and meta is so that Blizzard can tell everyone that they are inclusive and care about women after a lot of negative PR.