Support Main: Brigitte needs another nerf

General Discussion
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Before you freak out on me, I know Brigitte has counterplay. I know Brigitte has counters. I bought her golden mace when she first came out because I was excited about having a new support that was a Tracer counter. I like the idea of her playstyle, and I enjoy playing her myself.

But… She’s still sitting at a 57% winrate with a respectable 3.56% pickrate. She still has the third highest winrate in GM, only being beaten out by Mei and Soldier with their abysmal pickrates (meaning they’re probably being played by one-tricks or being switched to when somebody has already left the match). All evidence still points to her being too strong for such an easy to use hero. If a hero is going to be this easy to play as, she shouldn’t require nearly as much coordination to keep her in check. It just isn’t fair for her to be so rewarding and game-changing with so little effort when there are so many heroes whose kits require a lot of time and effort building up mechanical skill and good game sense to even begin to be viable.

Sincerely, a concerned Ana/Sombra main.

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All right what you porpose, that would make her less powerful but still made her good counter agnist highly mobile heroes?

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Lowering her shield health from 600 to 500. Lowering her primary damage to 30 from 35. Lower the duration of Shield Bash’s stun from 1 second to .7 (Flashbang length), still enough time to land a whipshot combo. Lowering Rally’s armor stacking to 50, but increasing the area of effect to 10 meters.

I don’t think these would be too drastic, and not all of them have to be implemented at the same time, but I do think they’d help make her less dominant of a pick.

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stun has been the problem since day 1. nerf it to the ground as she deserves it. watch these ez clap brigitte mains squeal then.

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She is not a “good” counter to highly mobile heroes she destroys them. This is a broader topic than this thread, but a good counter is one that makes the enemy think “oh they have X, I have to be more careful”. A single hero should never have such a huge advantage the enemy has to actually swap.

As for the specific question, I would personally nerf her shield by a good amount.

edit- to be clear, I do believe that an entire enemies team composition can make people swap heroes… it shouldn’t be a single hero that forces that decision. No one should have that big of an advantage or the game is basically broken.

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Not necessarily. The only “evidence” that suggests that at all is her winrate, but if her winrate was where it is truly because she were OP, then why would her pickrate not be higher? It’s not necessarily true that high-pickrate characters are OP, but it would be very strange to argue that OP characters don’t have high pickrates.

My interpretation of that stat is that, currently, GravStrike’s best counter is Dive. So, if the enemy is running GravStrike, what’s your best option? Dive, but the issue is that the GravStrike comp can run Brigitte to thrash your Dive. If we look at pickrates of the traditional Dive comp members, too (DVa, Winston, Genji, Tracer), they’re actually not awful, higher than Brigitte’s in GM, suggesting Dive may be appearing in Comp in some fashion. So, it’s likely that Brigitte’s only really being pulled out to deal with attempts to counter GravStrike with Dive, hence her high winrate but lower pickrate.

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Honestly, part of it probably has to do with the community’s perception of Brigitte as a hero. Most people don’t want to play her because she’s low skill high reward. Most people hate playing against her, and don’t want to play as her.

And an easy to play hero like Brigitte shouldn’t be able to shut down dive altogether. A character this simple to get value out of should not be getting meta changing levels of value. Winston is good at pressuring heroes like Genji/Widow but he doesn’t remove them entirely and he doesn’t have an easy time doing it. If comps outside of GravDrag are being shutdown by one low-skill hero, that’s a huge problem.

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Oh, not to mention the fact that we’re living in the double sniper meta, partly because Hanzo being insanely strong, and partly because Brigitte shuts down a lot of non-sniper DPS and heroes that can dive snipers so hard.

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Normally I would agree, but the thing to keep in mind here is that Dive is pretty fragile. If you lose one member of your dive (particularly someone like Winston or DVa who helps keep the others alive), it’s generally done, so all Brigitte needs to do is incapacitate one member of the dive long enough for them to die. So, it’s virtually impossible for Brigitte to not counter the entire Dive comp while countering a constituent member… and as it happens, she counters three of them

Ehhh not really true for Widow, but w/e

Are you saying this that GravStrike should be the exception? Also, let’s be fair here, Brigitte only shuts down Dive in this way. She hasn’t touch Pirate Ship, BeyBlade, etc because those were all ousted by Dive

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Nah shes fine, a little UP if anything.

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Brigitte’s shield already gets melted by several specific heroes individually, even without getting focused. If Blizzard ever gets around to fixing Bastion’s bullet spread so he can actually hit Brigitte’s smaller shield, she’ll be even weaker in this department. She really needs 600 shields to not get instantly killed. If you don’t think she needs that much, I think you’re severely underestimating how much damage gets thrown around in a 6v6. She needs to stand up to a team, not just one player shooting at her.

Brigitte already loses the W+M1 duel against Reinhardt. Her damage is also easy to out-heal. The only time her damage is even that threatening is during the shield bash stun combo. Lowering the damage of her shield bash to 45 so that she could still kill Tracer during stun but wouldn’t do as much to other heroes during the combo would be a better way to nerf her damage output.

This change might be okay, if there is indeed still time to land a melee hit + whipshot during the stun. However, I suspect that due to latency issues, it needs to be 1 second long to allow Brigitte to kill Tracer while she’s stunned. And she needs to be able to kill Tracer while she’s stunned. Otherwise, Brigitte has no way to finish her off and she can just go grab a health pack and come back to keep up the harassment indefinitely.

No. As-is, Rally’s maximum of 100 armor will leave a fully armored 200hp hero with only 5 hp left after getting hit once by Widowmaker. There must be an observable difference between damage heroes like Widow hitting an unarmored vs an armored target, and 100 is the absolute minimum armor required to make that difference.

What Brigitte needs to make her easier to counter and play against isn’t numbers tweaks. What she needs is to be reworked to focus on her ability to heal rather than her ability to stand in the middle of the enemy team swinging her mace around. She needs to be afraid to deal damage because of the risk it brings, rather than encouraged to deal damage since it’s the only way to heal herself.

What she really needs is to have her heal aura active while holding her shield up, not while swinging her mace around. That way, she could be played in the back away from combat to avoid risk and still get her job as a healer done, while maintaining all the tools she needs to deal with Genji and Tracer, and without being as powerful against tanks or Reaper due to her newfound lack of self-healing during combat. In addition, breaking Brigitte’s shield would prevent most of her healing, allowing for compelling counterplay and a real reason to attack the shield instead of killing her teammates.

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Hello. You know the problem yourself

Gravcomp is weak at dive, but we have brig for that. But what if there was no brig or brig is weaker?
Dive. What are we gonna stop dive then?
Use dive? Or ideally you want us to use more than 2 heros to stop dive but in reallity no other hero can do that currently. So it is too early to nerf Brig further. And Hammond is coming

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Normally I would agree, but the thing to keep in mind here is that Dive is pretty fragile. If you lose one member of your dive (particularly someone like Winston or DVa who helps keep the others alive), it’s generally done, so all Brigitte needs to do is incapacitate one member of the dive long enough for them to die. So, it’s virtually impossible for Brigitte to not counter the entire Dive comp while countering a constituent member… and as it happens, she counters three of them

And my point is that she shouldn’t HARD counter an entire team comp. She shouldn’t get so much value for being such an easy to use hero. My problem isn’t that Brigitte can incapacitate one member, it’s how easily she does it.

Ehhh not really true for Widow, but w/e

He can at least make her move from her position. Less so since they decided to buff her grapple, which was stupid.

Are you saying this that GravStrike should be the exception? Also, let’s be fair here, Brigitte only shuts down Dive in this way. She hasn’t touch Pirate Ship, BeyBlade, etc because those were all ousted by Dive

I don’t know what you’re reading into here. I’m just saying that dive strategies shouldn’t be countered by one low-skill hero.

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Yeah her winrates are straight up ridiculous. No other hero has ever even come close to what she’s pulled off statistically. But hey, that’s what you get when you create an easy mode hero that punishes her peers for playing poorly while being able to escape similar punishment.

I agree with you on the shield health reduction, I think that’s the best approach tbh.

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Brigitte’s shield already gets melted by several specific heroes individually, even without getting focused. If Blizzard ever gets around to fixing Bastion’s bullet spread so he can actually hit Brigitte’s smaller shield, she’ll be even weaker in this department. She really needs 600 shields to not get instantly killed. If you don’t think she needs that much, I think you’re severely underestimating how much damage gets thrown around in a 6v6. She needs to stand up to a team, not just one player shooting at her.

600 HP is a lot more than what most heroes get to work with. Yes, it can be focused, but so can every other hero that doesn’t have a Roadhog attached to the front of them. If they’re focusing your shield, they’re not hitting your team. My point isn’t that there’s no counterplay, it’s that the counterplay obviously isn’t enough when she’s so incredibly dominant. Heroes with consistent damage should be able to pressure her to back off if they do take the time to focus her shield.

Brigitte already loses the W+M1 duel against Reinhardt. Her damage is also easy to out-heal. The only time her damage is even that threatening is during the shield bash stun combo. Lowering the damage of her shield bash to 45 so that she could still kill Tracer during stun but wouldn’t do as much to other heroes during the combo would be a better way to nerf her damage output.

Her damage is moderately low but consistent with short but powerful bursts from her combo. “a better way to nerf her damage output”… You seem to be missing the point of me targeting her primary fire over shield bash.

It’s to nerf her. You know, make her less effective. To lower her 57% winrate and help bring other characters she counter back into the meta. Lowering her shield bash damage by 5 wouldn’t be a “better way of nerfing her”, it would just be nerfing her less, which defeats the purpose of nerfing a low skill hero with the highest winrate in the game. I don’t want to slightly graze a couple meaningless numbers across her kit. I want her to fall in line with the rest of the roster based on the effort it takes to play her. Nerfing her primary does the same thing by the way. She still can one-shot Tracer, and she doesn’t do as much to other heroes.

This change might be okay, if there is indeed still time to land a melee hit + whipshot during the stun. However, I suspect that due to latency issues, it needs to be 1 second long to allow Brigitte to kill Tracer while she’s stunned. And she needs to be able to kill Tracer while she’s stunned. Otherwise, Brigitte has no way to finish her off and she can just go grab a health pack and come back to keep up the harassment indefinitely.

I think there should be. Even if she can’t, I’m still of the opinion that the nerf would be justified. It would just mean that you have to land one primary hit on her and cancel it into shield bash, or that you would get Tracer’s recall out and force her to retreat. She would still be a soft counter even if Tracer could recall before the whipshot, which seems fair considering the difference in skillcap between the two.

No. As-is, Rally’s maximum of 100 armor will leave a fully armored 200hp hero with only 5 hp left after getting hit once by Widowmaker. There must be an observable difference between damage heroes like Widow hitting an unarmored vs an armored target, and 100 is the absolute minimum armor required to make that difference.

The problem is that the armor counters non-sniper heroes even harder. Even if it means that 200HP heroes could still get headshot, it would mean that heroes like Soldier, Sombra, Tracer, Hog, Reaper, Orisa, D. Va, Winston, wouldn’t have to slowly widdle down 100 armor before they could effectively fight again and it would focus it on being actively used in combat.

I do really like your idea. I’d like to see Brigitte focused more around supporting her team and protecting her backline rather than focusing targets with her burst combo. I wanted to see them lower her damage and instead reward skill with healing, like having whipshot give a small burst of heals to nearby allies. Anything to increase her skillcap.

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Wanna point this out. Widowmaker’s sniper shots do 120 dmg to the body with crit scaling of 3x so any 200 hp character would still be killed out right due to the dmg exceeding the 300 hp breakpoint.

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Actually it’s a 2.5 multiplier, so her max damage is 300 exactly.

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Thought it was 3x has there been a nerf?

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I remember them saying 3x a long time ago but I know it’s 2.5 now… I think it happened a long time ago when they nerfed her primary damage from 150.

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Aight, good to know, thx