The Brigitte megathread

General Discussion
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Yep, im going starting a megathread about brigitte, to discuss her issues, her balance point, And respond to some misconceptions about her kit

NOTE: THIS THREAD MAY BE EDITTED AT ANY TIME FOR SUGGESTIONS IN THE RESPONSES BELOW

Lets start with the basics

WHAT IS BRIGGITE?

a lot of people make the mistake of calling brigitte a “support” Which could not be more wrong, Brigitte is a tank support hybrid Meaning her job is not only to heal but also to create space

With that cleared up, Lets keep on shall we?

We know what she is, Now lets discuss

WHAT IS BRIGITTE GOOD AT

as stated above…shes a support tank hybrid, meaning her job is to create space, and to heal, So how does she do that exactly?

She has two methods of healing, Repair pack and Inspire

Lets start with the healing stuff

Repair pack

It has two separate effects, Giving armor, and healing, Now how do these work?

lets imagine someone has 1 hp, out of 200, That person would be healed for the full 150 hp, leaving them out at 151 hp,

Now, Our hero has 200/200 hp, We give him the repair pack, and then his health would get increased by 75 armor, 275/200 for 4 seconds,

Now lets get into complicated stuff, this is how i imagine it works: The health is applied first, any overheal that happens after repair pack is applied, is both halvened and turned into armor

So what does this mean?

We have a hero that has a total of 150 hp, currently with 100 hp, So 100/150

We give him a repair pack

He gets +50 healing, and gets health back to full, leaving us with +100 overheal, Which is halvened, aka 50, and then turned into armor, so our hero ends up with 200 / 150 hp

(note: this is all how i imagine it works, it needs testing)

Inspire

Inspire is an aura that acts in a 20 meter radius arround brigitte,

The aura procs on either using her melee attack, and her Shift ability, Once it hits something, the aura activates Healing 16 health per second for 5 seconds

Now, that activation has a cooldown of 1.5 seconds, meaning that if i activate my inspire, the first 1.5 seconds of the activation no matter what i do, Nothing will happen

After that duration, if i get another activation hit, The effects Will not stack rather, it will refresh the duration, Meaning that i can have an inspire active constantly as long as im repetedly hitting someone

Lets go into the space making abilities

Shield bash

ah yes, the demonic infernal creation that causes even the bravest hearts of the bravest crusaders to shake in fear,

Shield bash acts on a 60° degree cone in front of brigitte as shes shield bashing,

Anyone hit by shield bash suffers from 3 different effects (as of the moment of this posts creation and or latest edit)

  • 50 damage
  • 1 second Stun
  • Knockback (couldnt find any specifications on it, Imagine arround 1-3m tho)

For brigitte, It causes her to lunge forwards with a hitbox that travels along with her for 6 meters, Meaning that, if your standing 6m in front of brigitte, you´ll get stunned

The point of this stun is to disuade and punish people from coming in close range of brigitte, effectively, creating space, and punishing those who gets into range

whip Shot

Whip shot, technically brigs only “long range” ability, ith as a 20m range

Anyone hit by Whip shot, Will suffer from two effects

  • 70 damage
  • Knockback of 5 - 10m

For brigitte:

  • It will activate Inspire

Sustain

Not much to say, She has a shield, She can walk into the action without taking much damage, deny ult charge directly to her (since shields dont give ult charge) She also has her self heal passive, and stuff so she can shield and heal

Now that we know what her strenghts are, Lets get into the Heroes she is good versus, we´ll make it in small groups to make it easier to understand

HEROES BRIGITTE IS GOOD VERSUS

.

Close range heroes
Some examples of this are:

  • Reinhart
  • Winston
  • Doomfist

Why

Brigitte space making abilities, can punish this heroes if their not careful, She can stun them, leaving them open to attacks, or just knock them away, getting them off their range

TANKS

  • Reinhart
  • Roadhog
  • Winston
  • Dva

Why

Tanks generally lack good brust damage to finish brigitte off, and their comonly coinciding with beeing close range heroes, meaning brigitte has an advantage over them

FLANKERS

  • Tracer
  • Gengu

Why

Simply, Her armor can deny their damage by cutting it in half, delete their progress with health pack, and she can do a nice combo, either killing them (Tracer) or leaving them stranded and stunned in the back, alone, with all the enemy team arround ready to clobber them

Now on to the uknown, deep deep in the dark, Under tons tons of treasures and hidden behind the hardest of puzzles, Brigittes bad side

WHAT IS BRIGITTE BAD AT

.

Long range

As stated before, her kit posseses Little to no ranged capabilities what sowever meaning that she cant context heroes like snipers

Sustained damage

While brigittes Combo is strong to match certain DPS brust abilities, It is important to understand that Her full combo is on a total 7s cooldown it is only effective at close range and costs more resources than some other brust combos Like, Helix, While helix does 120 damage and brigs combo does 155, its important to know that, helix can be used at long range, is on a similar cooldown, and its only one ability, While Brigs combo requires 2,

sustained healing

Her best healing tool is single target, in a long 6 second cooldown,
and her inspire passive, while AOE and in a long range, is only effective if brig is dealing damage, therefore, she cannot hide in the backline like all other supports

Now, we are going to say what heroes brig is bad against, like before, we are putting them in groups

WHAT HEROES BRIG IS BAD VS

Long range heroes

  • Widowmaker
  • Hanzo
  • Pharah
  • Junkrat

Why

Brigitte has no capabilities to reach to them, and they can safely poke her down to death, while she has a shield, this is only really delaying the inevitable,

High brust damage

  • Junkrat
  • Doomfist
  • Widowmaker

why

Coinciding with the most common long range heroes, Snipers, and their high brust damage potential, Really all brigitte can do is predict a headshot and try to save a teammate with the extra hp, and this will not work depending on the sniper or hero beeing repair packed

Now into some balance stuff

BRIGGITES CURRENT STATE

Belive what you may belive, In my own opinion, She is in a balanced state,

But magy you may say, Look at her winrate! She has like 60% winrate!

Simple, Looking at her strenghts and weaknesses, you can conclude in one thing

Shes utterly usless and heavily countered by what she is bad against, and shes really strong vs what she is good against, Meaning just like with the old sym / torb situation, When things go right, and shes played where she is meant to, She wins, But when shes pitched against her counters, people jsut switch off since they literally have no reason to keep playing her

But shes unfun to play against, She has to be changed!

Fun is subjective, And it is in no way a fact to change a hero, you, person reading this thread, find completly different things Fun, And its affected by the heroes we play

Now thats out of the way, What Would I do with brigitte? I would give her a few minor nerfs

BUT MAGY, you say, YOU LITREALLY JUST TOLD ME SHES BALANCED

Yes, She is, But what im looking for with this changes is to make brigitte less strong in the low ranks and increase the windows where she can be punished if people play correctly against her a

WHAT I WOULD DO

First, The “normie” stuff, The ideas that are actual changes, with actual numbers and stuff

note: The numbers here are subject to change, mostly i add them for context of the idea, Not as hard, pre-meditated, numbers

BARRIER SHIELD

  • Barrier shield regeneration reduced from 100 to 75
  • Barrier shield time until regeneration starts increased from 2 to 5 seconds

Simply this changes look to punish brigittes who lose their shield often, and those who block meaningless damage, this change encourages more shield managment, and makes the loss of a shield more punishing overall

The more, “farfeched ideas” just some i could come up with

ROCKET FLAIL

as you know, Brigittes weapon works in a cone in front of her, dealing 35 damage a swing in its range, What i think of, that would be an idea, is to make certain part of the hitbox a “good” hit, and the other one a “bad” hit, This is what i mean is explained in this image

(sorry that its not exactly symmetrical, i have no pulse :p)

The green part of the hitbox is the good hit, if you hit someone there, it deals more damage, if you hit them in the red part, they take less damage

Why the NEW PTR CHANGES ARE BAD

Simply, This removes what brigitte is good at, Creating space, If your not scared of her combo, and beeing stunned, This also makes brig unable to kill a tracer who gets caught in her range, And this tracer, while the armor and the inspire passive can reduce her effectivess, she can still one clip people, by going into close range, and even if shes caught by the stun, She wont die and can freely recall back to safety

WHY THE INSPIRE PASSIVES DONT CHANGE MUCH

The increased duration is meh really, most of the times you have already refreshed the duration by then, or you were too far to make that count, Same for the cooldown decrease,

Her total healing is also really Meh in total, For the same reason as before, Most of the times, by then, i have already refreshed my passive and gotten more heals, It only matters when i have no one arround to proc my passive on them, and come on, wee 20 extra hp, thats such a difference

THIS THREAD MAY BE EDITTED AT ANY TIME FOR SUGGESTIONS IN THE RESPONSES BELOW

SUGGESTIONS MADE BY OTHER PEOPLE

If you read this far good job

Now everyone feel free to DISCUSS below,
Please leave your pitchforks and torches at the entrance

if you come here to make ironic comments or to be toxic, please leave,

RESPONSES TO COMMON ARGUMENTS

just since i have time, some responses to the most classic arguments i hear about:

“Brigitte is a DPS, Tank, and Support, she does everything at once”

Not at all actually, While she can do some good brust damage, she has to commit all her abilities in a single target to perform so, Its limited in range, and doesnt even archieve a kill except on 150hp heroes,

For more information check the “What is brigitte bad at” section

“Too much reward for the little skill she requires”

Mainly, i touched this in a Old thread of mine Where i explained why i say all heroes are equally as hard to master, its my opinion on the matter, but i do keep it up, But i still want to add a few changes to make her shield managment requirments similar to that of rein

“She still counters tracer even after the bash change”

Sure she does, nobody said she doesnt, But the thing is, tracer is a hero that you have to kill, Shes not like a sombra, or a bastion, or a widow, which you can disrupt their effectiveness without killing them tracer will farm her bomb if you let her free, and she will keep bothering your backline and your healers constantly, until she can get the kill

" shes a dps tank support!"

No, shes not, Let me answer you with a question, Is Zarya a dps tank? or Roadhog? no, their bruisers, Cant rein do damage? Or orisa? yes they can and their still MAIN tanks

In Overwatch tanks to damage, thats a thing, they do medium - high close range damage, as you have seen, hence why we have a tank meta right now, and their survivable, While they do not match the DPSs actual damage, and even if they do, their limited by certain things on their kits (Roadhog spread, Zarya energy, Rein slow swing speed,etc )

This is why brig can deal “good” damage, Her beeing part tank, which gives her extra 50 armor, her shield and her crowd control, and her damage beeing “Meh” at close range,

But in fact, brig LACKS the ability to deal sustained damage, and her only damage is brust on a really long cooldown, any dps, EVEN the ones that do the least amounts of damage, can do more damage, or the same, in the same amount brig uses her shield bash stun combo, and after that, they can still keep doing it, while brig just locked herself out of her mayor crowd control abilities to secure the kill

16 Likes
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TLDR, but honestly every single hero should have their own megathread in a specific forum set aside for that.

1 Like
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there are some highlighted parts in all the text, and its sectioned, You can easily read the highlighted parts and get a general TLDR,

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All I can say is that as a former Brigitte defender, despite not ever really playing her, I have joined the delete Brig movement. They actually finally have a point, you might as well delete the character because she offers virtually nothing now other than being a budget basement Moira with a stun. I guess McCree has his haters that believe he is balanced despite being a lesser version of Ashe with a stun. So I might get some backlash for this, but there is literally no point to play Brigitte outside of fun. And as a result, today, I now ship McCree and Brigitte. Worthless knock-offs that have pretty cool designs and not much else.

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Don’t worry, I’ll get back to it later. :slight_smile: But my point stands–I believe every hero deserves their own megathread, and ALL balance discussions should go in there. On days such as today’s when patches are announced, the forums are flooded with talk about that, but other times it just gets weary to see 90% of the post be nerf/buff/rework requests. :tired_face:

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Tbh we really, really need a Brig megathread from the devs. Forums are filled with Brig more than with Mercy was ever.

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Well we have this now,

the devs probably wont do one until she gets reworked atleast 2 times :wink:

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It is because, despite how people felt about Mercy, most of it was exaggerated. She was never truly oppressive (lul…) and she was never truly nerfed into worthlessness. Brigitte is both sides of those coins. Do not get me wrong, the whole Mercy mess was not fair for either side either. But THIS, this is just absurd. It makes the Mercy changes seem reasonable and well thought out on both fronts and that used to be sarcastically used to jab at Blizzard’s competence. But lowkey, it was a highlight to some of their okay decision making now that we have this situation.

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Hey I just wanted to throw in an idea Silawatsi had. I think this could be a nice idea to play around with. Feel free to share your thoughts about it.

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Oh that reminds me, I should make a other suggestions edit…give me a sec

There done

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For balance, i think that the “cant go through barriers” and 5 damage nerf is too much. I agree in the first one but the bash is now a short range Sleep Dart.

Maybe a rework could help now but what kind of rework? Brig could be a good off-tank with Inspire and Rally replaced with something else.

Shield Bash replacement: Flail Spin
Brigitte spins her flail around herself 3 times all hits stay 35 damage but does a very small knockback and Brigitte can move during this ability as well.

For replacing Whip Shot, im thinking about something projectile based like Fire Strike.

Repair Pack: Since no more self-healing in this rework, she can give Repair Pack to herself individually from the cooldown of the Repair Pack given to other players.

Inspire replacement: Instead of giving health to himself it could repair her own shield since in this rework concept theres no Bash.

Rally: Instead of armor it gives attack speed boost and barrier regeneration (even for the placed ones) but if a player/barrier goes out of range, the effect immediately stops.

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i quoted it on the thread

1 Like
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This was a really good read and what you said about the PTR changes basically described how I feel about the whole situation too!

Your suggested changes sound pretty good as well. Especially the change for her flail and giving it that sweet spot.

Honestly, I thought she was pretty balanced before. And like you said, this nerf removes what she is good at. Or at least makes her a lot worse at it. I think if they just nerfed it down to 15~25 (somewhere around there), then it would have been a bit more reasonable. Even then, they still should have waited until the “can’t go through barriers” change was on live for a bit. Stacking both nerfs on her so soon wasn’t the best idea.

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i got the gold weapon for brigitte… i wish i could get a refund… after all the nerfs i dont want to play her anymore… thanks blizzard for ruining the fun of a hero.

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Will comment on this later.

With the news of recent changes, it takes time to account for everything.

16

Great post.


Bumper car

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Good post OP.

The one point I would really take issue with is where you say that her win rate isn’t a problem because she only does well in certain areas. That’s an outlook that people have typically used for far more niche heroes like old Sym and Torb.

While you do have to be a little selective about when to run Brig, it’s actually still a pretty wide range of points and maps where she has a bit of an outsized impact. This is the sort of thing where I would agree with you wholeheartedly if overwatch had better map diversity, but as it stands short range limitations just aren’t as much of a weakness as you’d think in a game with tight maps, barriers, and designated points that need to be fought over.

As for her nerfs, I like her being moved into less of a hardcounter for tracer, I just wish they’d found a more elegant solution to how she interacts with Rein. Looks extremely janky.

Edit: Btw, I love your idea of having a sweet spot for melee hits. I’m not one of those “mechanical skill is the only skill!” people, but having more engaging mechanics for melee could be very cool. I’d even be down for Brig having higher damage on well placed shots.

1 Like
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Maybe you should try fixing the title.

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Theres an error in the title?

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Brigitte :+1:
Briggite :point_down: