It’s been clear for a long time now that it’s not “just the meta”, people do know how to play her, and it’s not just that ‘she needs teamwork to follow up.’
Metas have come and gone in which she’s been thought of as a means to break it (3 Tank, Deathball, Current), or reinforce it (dive). None of this has come to pass. It is not the problem; although it is fairly clear the introduction of Brigitte has not helped - regardless of whether Brigitte was meta or not; the recourse to abundant armour would have hurt her just as it hurt so many other heroes. We see in OWL and increasingly at higher end play ‘the threat of Brigitte’ is keeping heroes like Soldier and Tracer’s play rates down.
She’s been around 18 months, plenty of time for players to get to learn her and get good at her and show what she can do. Even those best players readily admit she has issues.
And lastly, if Zarya can be so phenomenally popular requiring the follow up as she does for Graviton, and intentionally getting shot at while shielded; what reason is there that players can’t follow up on Sombra’s Hacks and EMP?
Those aren’t problems.
Yes, she also has bugs, but her stats have never shown greatness, or even averageness. She’s now statistically the worst hero on the game; bug fixes won’t be enough.
Her recent changes have left her in a worse position than Season 8.
Hack now has a marginally faster cast time, but now much more easily broken; a simple Blink, Dash or other rapid movement ability will break Hack by triggering her LOS checks where previously the ‘grace period’ would have allowed them to go through.
Meanwhile, should it be broken on damage, you’re now punished with effectively being Hacked yourself, reduced to your Ingram and maybe your TL to escape combat altogether - granting your opponent victory and time. This isn’t necessarily punishment for good, intended play either; too often Hack is broken by ‘accident’, without intent from anyone.
She casts far fewer EMPs due to not being able to charge from Health Packs.
Her reduced spread only marginally increased her effective DPS range, it didn’t really effect her DPS. If you did, and still do get close, it makes little difference.
5 Seconds on Translocate gives you extra time to reload.
So that’s what happened. Her buffs were somewhat minor while her nerfs ultimately very harsh.
How do I suggest fixing it?
- Change Opportunist. It’s nice in FFA DM, but honestly in Competitive play, there’s limited use; players tend to not isolate themselves enough to fall victim to it. Regularly you’ll see the low health player, but not their full/high health friends with them.
Instead, High Velocity Ammunition. She rips off enough from Ghost in the Shell anyway, so I think it would be fitting that her ammunition should be less impacted by armour - it’s also fitting with her capacity to break barriers and initial design to break Tank metas in general.
- Buff Stealth. Reduce the time to enter and exit Stealth, and especially remove the infernal slow that hits when you leave Stealth.
This should allow a bit more use for it than as a glorified Sprint.
- Fix Translocate so you land where it appears to be while in flight.
Removes a lot of clunk from it, and allows it to be more useful as a clutch ‘blink’ while in combat.
- Add a damage threshold to break Hack, this to ensure there’s a sense of intent behind the attempt to break it.
Alternatively, for ‘fairness’, increase the cast time to 1 second but have it only interrupted by Knockbacks, Stuns, Sleeps etc. Again, to ensure ‘fairness’ of a sense of intent to break the ability.
Maybe not all of these are necessary, but they would add much needed fluidity and reliability to her gameplay.
![:man_shrugging:t5:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/man_shrugging/5.png?v=5" ":man_shrugging:t5:")