The reason for (Almost) all problems in the game

General Discussion
1

I see a lot of questions and opinions in the forums, a lot of them repeat themselves.
Some about heroes like Moira,Mercy,Brigitte & Mei that count as too strong or too weak
Some about one shot abillities being unbalanced.
Some about dps role compared to other roles and much more things…
Believe it or not but all the problems in the game come from one spot…
Shields.

In this post I will explain how the state of shields effected each hero and how excacly it connects to every problem.

'Underpowered' heroes-Bastion,Symmetra,Junkrat,Mercy

~This peragraph will focus especially on the effect of the recent shield nerf~

Some heroes in the game count as stronger while other count as weaker.
how all 4 heroes I mantioned in the title connect to the shield sega?

All heroes I mantioned count as amazing shield counters.
but how does it make them underpowered?
After the recent shield nerfs shields bacame too easy to break and since role queue was added it meant less big targets to hit in a game.
because of that heroes like junkrat and bastion has much less use since most heroes can now break shields and fight tanks as well much better.
and heroes like mercy that usually paired up with heroes from the role see much less use as a burst damage medium-long range enabler.

also because of this change heroes that were previously weak to shields see more play countering even more heroes Mercy is good with like soldier countering Pharah for example or widow countering Junkjrat.

Of course it doesn’t neciecierly mean that stronger shields=much more use for the heroes in term of viability but that connect more to the “one shot problem” and the “dps role long queue” both show different parts of problems created by shields…

'Overpowered' heroes like Moira,Brigitte,Reinhardt& Ana

~This peragraph will focus especially on the state of the tank category~

If you look at all heroes in the list you probably don’t notice anything that connect all 4 heroes. heroes that I could have added to the list before the nerfs were Mei & Doomfist.
The thing that unite all 6 heroes is the way they deal their damage/utility.
Shields are a HUGE part of the tank category and because of that not a lot of different utilities exist for tanks and the ones that do exist are underpowered.

Just for example If we look at Ana, sure all of her abillities don’t go through shields but using an anti nade above a shield can bring HUGE value.
you’d expect defense matrix or bubble to be the answert for the abillity but unlike shields that can just block most things efficiently without letting any damage go through, matrix is usually not fast enough in order to block the nade and bubble only works for 2 players at a time, not to mention the ability has an extremely long cool down making it sometimes a waist to use bubble on a nade.

The tank category is focused especially on shields and because of that every other abillity is usually reffered as an offtank since it’s not as strong or useful compared to shields overall. That results in the fact that heroes that ignore shields completely or at least can get value even with them in the way gets much more value from themselves compared to others since there’s no real way to block them or at least much weaker defense against their abillities.

as a 2nd example I want to give Moira. both her ultimate and orbs go through barriers and while you can theoretically speaking block the orbs with deffense matrix it’s not always possibility and in a lot of times it will already get value before consuming it, not only that but also Moira’s ultimate goes past every possible abillity in the game except for Mei’s wall making the abillity uncounterable by an abillity- she gains it fast so most support heroes don’t get ultimate to block her ultimate and she moves fast enough to ignore most stuns.

The one shot problem fits Doomfist,widowmaker & Hanzo

some players complain about the fact some heroes are capable to one shot squishies while all other heroes can be stopped or at least have smaller impact.

the biggest reasoning for that complain is the fact most heroes require a counter. and the reward to risk values should be equal.
and it is the case most of the time for these heroes as well.
Doomfist for example can be easily killed using roadhog or Bastion but can also get a free kill without any problem.

I believe the biggest reason for these complains is the lack of different protection ways and/or lack of heroes that get countered by the different protection ways.
recently I hear less and less about widow and hanzo being problematic since both dive getting more play and sigma getting added to the game but even today people STILL complain about doomfist and I feel like this complain just come from the fact hog doesn’t see enough play of countering.
alot of players pick him for extra damage and get quick hooks but it just feels like they don’t understand the use of the hook in a deffensive way.

The can be due to 2 reasons,

  1. since shields are the main protection way hog becomes more a 3rd dps instead of 2nd tank that protect with interruption and survivability

or
2.simply hog kit embrace every hook use and not a smart one.

either way Roadhog doesnt feel like a real tank compared to rein or orisa for example

Dps role long queues

We all know the dps role has the longest queue for many reasons.
but in this time I want to focus one specific reason- the impact of each role.

because the strength of shields compared to other roles taking a shield tank became a must do. because of that every match has similar heroes. combine that with the lack of tanks and you’ve got a role with no unique ways to contribute to the team.
Sure Zarya can be nice against Reaper or picking hog for Doomfist, but even then the tank category doesn’t really provide any special choice for the user to bring totally different tools unlike the support class or the dps class.
for example if the enemies run a lot of spam? both lucio and brig can be helpful.
your team has snipers? mercy and zen
push forward with a brawl comp? Ana-lucio
a lot of combinations can be made but in the tank category you’d usually pick similar picks with similar tools.
Zarya and hog while having their difference usually have similar impact.
you’d always go for a shield and an offtank that his job is slightly different and really deppends on the composition.
because of that not only you make the category more boring but also make the matchups less impactful. the enemies will always run similar compositions and you’d usually get the same problems from the tanks category while support heroes can be used for multiple uses in a much different way.

Both the facts that the role becomes boring and use of the heroes provides similar protection utilities makes the role much more boring and makes it so most players would pick dps>tank.

(Ofcourse most players would prefer dps>support since dps still has more heroes in it and damaging usually count as more fun than healing)

2

I feel most of this game’s issues are around lack of individual impact myself. If you could turn around games by yourself, people would be in a happier spot here. Especially us solo queuers

I feel thats why many pros are moving to Valorant. It’s just so much more solo-friendly

1 Like
3

I agree although it really deppends on the situation. in a lot of times you can carry your team with a decent team.
but it really deppends on the enemeis pick,your team pick and how good each side each. but overall I do agree the dependency is kind of a big problem.
but what solutions can they add?
either embracing that fact with more cheese characters like a pirate ship or find a method to let heroes carry easier from each role.

4
SombraIn total mayhem
5

Probably up the damage and mobility potential for tanks, supports and utility dps. maaaaaybe

6

but then you create a new problem.
more damage=less effect of protection & healing.
more speed=direct nerf to long range heroes and lucio

and you cant increase the healing since more damage=faster killing=less time to heal, and there’s a point where it’s just one shot and yet still not enough healing… by increasing damage you jsut buff the dps role

7

Eh, I could fix most of those problems in a week if they gave me the reins.

This idea alone solves:

  • BarrierTanks not being popular enough
  • Bad DPS queue times
  • DoubleBarrier
  • DoubleOffTank (which makes snipers a problem)
  • Mei/Reaper DoubleTank

Mercy
50hps on flying targets, 60hps on grounded targets
Higher heal main beam on Valk, lower heal chain beams
Lower Valk duration

Bastion
Recon mode, 25% damage resistance
passive
Ultimate, 0.5sec transform speed

Symmetra
100hp, 150 shieldhealth
Shieldhealth regen starts after 1sec
15m range beam

Junkrat
0.3m radius grenade when fired, 0.2m radius on bounce

Moira
Damage Orb leaves you with 1hp and can’t fully kill
Lower the cylinder radius on primary attack

Sombra
10% more movement speed, in and out of stealth
Translocate reloads the gun
Automated voicelines to tell teammates to shoot the hacked guy
Better visual indicator for a hacked enemy

8

I see what you mean. It seems difficult really.

9

But then you miss the point of the hero… instead of making her a long range+burst healer you make her into a more general role and that’s how metas are born when a hero is good in all positions…
I really think mercy should be focused more on healing heroes like hog,junkrat,widow,bastion & hanzo instead of being an overall main healer for every possible hero in the game…
Not saying all other healers are perfect but i’ve never seen a lucio healing a pharah or a speed boosting a bastion in a really effective way…

That doesn’t solve the problem with the hero…
He’s still has no place to be useful. before he was a shield spammer and a tank killer.
now with 2-2-2 and shield nerf we have much less tanks and every hero can do his job almost as good as him and have more uses.
Why picking Bastion when soldier can do the exact same thing more mobility and smaller size?
You cant fix the hero when the whole idea of the hero doesnt exist anymore…

when fixing a hero you have to understand what the goal of the hero is and what’s wrong with it… In Symmetra case not only she’s too fragile for her weapon kind but also her turrets don’t really make sense. unlike torb turret, sym turret is good against close range heroes with low mobility like Junkrat,Reaper or Reinheart that can not destroy her turrets.
because of that 6 turrets was amazing since it takes 2X the time to destroy them as reaper or junkrat.
now she only got 3 on too long of a cool down, and she really is too fregile most of the time so the extra 50 shield health can be nice…

But why picking junkrat in the first place?
the one thing he suppose to destroy is the one thing that suppose to protect him.
you take shields you’re left with a HUGE hit box that has much less to destroy…
sure he’s still good in chokes but it’s not enough to keep the character viable.

But all the job of the damage orb is to finish targets…
also it still doesn’t solve the problem of her abilities getting through everything making them technically unstoppable…

That one is actually nice and would be really helpful but we still need more flank heroes to the game.
we have divers and kiters which are close but we need more heroes especially tanks that can reach backlines unnoticed. right now you either need to follow up on a hacked target or play her in a dive composition and hope for the best.
Another problem is the fact she just doesnt do enough in terms of damage…
Hack is extremly good in high ranks because the same reason as discord orb. when everyone focus one target every little bit of utility helps.
but in low ranks each hero should be more deppendable on itself and I believe increasing Sombra’s damage will be really good to help her in low ranks while not making her too op in the higher ones.

Overall your changes are nice but I really think that in order to solve every problem you need to think about
1.what the hero supposed to do
2. why isnt it good or enough
3. what impacts from its surroundings can be responsible for that

It just feels to me that in the offices they just look at the problems too plain.
hero no good? hero gets random buff.
And it’s really sad to see such a good concept of a game getting such a poor treatment but at least they try I guess…

10

This is largely incorrect. Barriers in general have increased from the early days of Overwatch to the point where there has been something of a “barrier-creep”. It’s now possible (and still is), to get more total combined barrier health than in launch, save for only a few exceptions.

None of this has to do with why these characters aren’t played often, however.

It’s difficult to parse what you’re saying here, but it looks completely contradictory to your previous statement.

Only half of the Tank category has barriers. Only two beam weapons ignore barriers and one of them belongs to a tank, and other an ultimate primarily used for healing. Secondly, Moira’s ultimate’s damage is far too low that even basic healing will overpower it. Pretty much any Support healing that’s paying attention will be able to mitigate more than 90% percent of its damage, even Mercy.

Heroes that can ignore barriers completely (Doomfist, Winston, Tracer, Genji, among others) aren’t really being played in high-ranked metas. Most players are using heroes that are more well-rounded in dealing with barriers and enemy targets (such as Reaper and McCree, who are both effective on barriers and can inflict significant damage in close quarters).

Much of the high-ranked meta basically boils down to this; “How can we effectively remove/disable Tanks such as Reinhardt et. al. and take control of the objective.” Not much else is concerning in the grand scope of things. McCree may considered problematic in part because of his effectiveness in disabling other targets outside of Reinhardt.

To put it simply, one-shot heroes are largely countered by the mere presence of barriers. They have low damage per second, and high-end burst damage that forces them to make their shots count, or they become useless or less effective. The increase in barriers pretty much prevents them from being used, and unfortunate and problematic map designs prevent any other additions.

Doomfist is hardly a special case. Much like Widowmaker, Doomfist requires an immense amount of time to prep his one-shot, and additional requirement that his target MUST hit a wall. Failure results in an exceptionally long cooldown for a one-shot element, and Doomfist is incapable of critical hits in the same way that Hanzo or Widowmaker can apply. You’re are grossly underestimating the difficulties Doomfist has in order to attempt a one-shot.

Hard counters don’t exist in Overwatch. Certain heroes will have advantages over others, but that’s not a case of a hard-counter. Counter-play, primarily exists in ultimates, and not every ultimate has a direct counter (see EMP).

Hog has more than twice the effective HP or Orisa or Reinhardt. Secondly, like Reinhardt, he relies on burst damage. Low average damage per second (and over time), but high-end burst that rivals Reaper, Tracer, and Bastion.

Secondly, this is really hard to parse here, and it sounds like you’re still contradicting yourself.

This largely makes no sense.

You still don’t get it.

You’ve done nothing to solve the problem, and instead create more problems.

Brusiers already exist in the game, they’re not your “off-tanks” like Roadhog. They’re the ones with 250 HP, like Reaper, Doomfist, Mei, and others.

This won’t solve damage queue times if the game is going to require one barrier Tank and one “brusier”.

Mei and Reaper are not Tanks. They are too small, and don’t have the required abilities to play as Tanks. This will not change and will not happen. Get over it.

If the average accuracy is lower than 40%, no one wins against a Mercy healed target, period. Learn some basic math.

Pointless and unnecessary.

350 effective health, again. Failure to understand basic math.

Unnecessary complexities are unnecessary.

Unnecessary complexities are unnecessary. Damage Orb’s damage is so low, that Lucio heals it just by breathing and Moira wastes a cooldown.

Still slower than Tracer, Genji.
Still don’t understand that 160 damage per second is still higher than McCree’s DPS, and with a spread lower than Tracer.
Unnecesary.
Big red skull already exists, if you can’t see it, it won’t change no matter how big you make, especially with the all the visual clutter in the game. Most players can’t even see hit detection.

11

That’s the trick, the Bruiser subrole is optional.

Otherwise the game just starts with 3Damage.

12

Technically yes but the overall utility is different.
most teams will not run 2 shields and if they do it comes with a price.
at lunch you’ve got a little bit more hp to shield but got a 2nd tank with a lot of utilities, now you either have to choose between 2nd shield that techincly has in total 800 less hp than what it were when released to weaker shield with extra utility.
not only that but at lunch you at least got the opportunity to go for differnet compositions. having 3 tanks or even 4 was an option, now you’re forced to fight always 2 tanks.
also the options you have for tanks give you more ways to counter the heroes i’ve mantioned.
Both Bastion and Junkrat are fairly weak to Sigma for example.
I don’t say it’s the only reason for them not being played but it had a big impact.
before the shield nerf Bastion was even played in the league in the finals (the winning team used Bastion). now the poor robot has less than 0.3% pick rate in all ranks…

1 is about countering shields and the 2nd is about going through them.
The overall point is that shields still do their job they just easier to deal with for everyone but im giving the 2 sides of this change- they are easier to break but it doesnt mean they are not effective at doing their overall job.
it’s like comparing utility to healing. 2 different parts of the same thing (support hero in that case).
the ability doesnt have enough hp to require special countering to it but has enough potential to overall block more abillities than any other abillity.

and overall I’m trying to compare barriers here to 2 different things. enemies and other protection ways.
so while barriers are weak to some enemies, they still do better job in most cases compared to other protection ways

“only”, it’s like saying half of the support heroes will bring speed boost or half the dps will be snipers… a role should never be repeating the same mechanism so many times…
and while the ultimate of course is not an op damage abillity it’s still a problematic ult if you cant counter it.
sure it doesnt do too much damage but you always want some sort of a solution to every abillity the enemeis have in order to have a fair game.
remember that damage stack in team fight and having one abillity that can hit all without any way to deffend against it is not balanced no matter how weak it is.
there’s a big difference between balanced abillity to balanced potential/damage.
if you increase/decrease numbers is one thing but if you change abillity it’s another one, just for example Symmetra turrets- if you give her 6 instead of 3 even if you change the values of damage and hp it will never be the same as 3 turrets since it deppends on what you’re fighting against. reaper and rein will suffer much more from 6 turrets while soldier and bastion while not really feeling a huge difference will be effected more by 3 with more damage and hp.

Also keep in mind in lower ranks where most players are, the coordination is much less accessible and even 1health point can do the difference between life and death…
I personally believe each abillity in the game should have at least 1 solution from each class to it.
1 way to protect from it, 1 way to use possitive utility to avoid the abillity or negate it and 1 offensive abillity to counter it.

Overall different ranks have different solutions. a lot of changes effect one rank in one way and another in other way so it’s hard looking at a problem from all direction… but even there, they pick a hero that barriers will not effect. but noting because of hook or bubble… just shows how strong barriers are compared to other protective abillities

Once again it shows how strong is one protection way to another…
in a balanced category bubble will be as much as a problem as barrier and by that making mccree a bad choice against brawl. his stun should be countered be bubble and his shots cant do much against barriers.
but because Zarya for some reason is much more focused on damage and just a little on protection she doesn’t really concidered a good tank in my opinion…
even in the support category heroes that bring a lot of damage still bring a good amount of utility and healing.
players will pick discord orb because of his effect but with zarya’s bubble I really don’t feel like she does a good enough job against stuns or effects…

I agree, just saying that to not look like i’ve ignored.

Once again deppends on the rank,your teamthe doomfist and the enemies…
below diamond (where most players are) doomfist can easily get a kill and get out. Fortunatly im gold+plat in role queue and diamond in the open queue competetive so i’ve seen both enviorments to see your point in the higher ranks but in plat and gold doomfist can usually get free kill unless your team has a good Roadhog,Bastion or ana…

Reaper vs Pharah?
Bastion vs Doomfist?
Zarya vs Widowmaker?
3 exmaples of heroes that cant do noting against the others and need their team in order to do anything against the enemies…

Emp was at least blocked by mei’s ice wall for example and after it was used it’s over, not to mantion it takes a long time to get it so you’ve got more options to deal with it.

But even so you’re right. and that’s why it was one of if not the strongest abillity before the ultimate charge nerf accured…
Sombra is just not good enough for most ranks without her ult and since it takes so much time to gain it, it doesnt worth as much as before.

But I agree that abillity needs some sort of counter as well.
I don’t expect an abillity to totally shut down a hero but giving some sort of a way to deal with it.

I count shield as hp since it usually gets destroyed or block a lot of damage before the user dies.
Once against sure in high ranks usually people prefer the close range method of ignoring the shield entirely but the idea of a balanced game is to let players a possibility to deal with everything.
you can say the same thing about bubble and attacking from long range…
My point is comparing the protection ways not talking about strength overall because it’s clear from 1st point especially that shields are not a zen ult with infinite d.va bombs tied to it. it’s an abillities like everything else but even then it’s a strong one.
and the fact one abillity is strong and the other isnt doesnt mean nerf the strong abillity it can also mean buff the weak one. and if you do nerf an abillity there’s couple of ways to nerf an ability and not just nerf the hp because it’s not what going to solve the problem with shields… they still block more abilities and damage than everything else, has bigger area and and more frequent use…

and about your example, you compared hog to rein and it’s right both have slow bursty damage, but there’s a huge difference between just damage and survivability to damage and protection your whole team.
we’re back to the previous point of comparing potential to comparing to other abillities and shields are way stronger than other abillities even if their potential is balanced…
I’m sorry I didn’t understand where did I contradicting myself. I would like if you"d point it out so I can look and either fix myself or explain if didnt understood correctly…

Why not?
sure tanks have different playstyle but so do dps and support.
both ana and zen like to heal from distance but it doesnt mean they provide the same utility. one focus more on damage a specific target while the other focus on anti healing the enemies and buffing your team healing.
One last final time comparing 2 different things you probably looked at playstyle while I looked at the overall protection. shields might have different shapes or cooldowns or things like that but they still used for the same overall porpuse and still block the same abillities…

13

Shadowstepping up into a perch or platform high enough for Reaper’s damage to effectively hit Pharah. Wraith form allows Reaper to avoid and escape Barrage and general fire into an enclosing and force Pharah to either follow and engage on Reaper’s terms or let him go. This is not revolutionary logic, nor unusual. Pharah certainly has an advantage against Reaper, but to say that Reaper has no tools, or is a rock to Pharah’s paper is grossly underselling what Reaper is capable of in dealing with Pharah.

Doomfist vs. Bastion is similar to Bastion vs. everyone. Doomfist gets a nice big target to smash against and combo with his various abilities. Bastion in Sentry mode is a much harder target to manage, but Doomfist can easily approach from behind and unload his LMB into his weak point for a full damage kill.

Zarya’s RMB travel 80 meters and can do as much as 90 damage. Barrier will protect against specific sniper shots for a limited time, but allow for an easy approach. Barriers will also clear out Venom mine. Again, Zarya may be at a disadvantage, but this isn’t a hard counter.

At launch you had the opportunity to run 6 Reinhardts if you wanted to. That’s 12,000 barrier health. When Sigma was released and before the barrier reductions, you could hit 8500 barrier health without running more than 2 Tanks, and still have plenty of damage and utility.

In a vacuum, pick rates are often argued for why a hero isn’t played much, but using pick rates isn’t really a good reason for much of any argument. See GOATS meta, and how the whole class of Damage was rarely, if ever, picked in the high end rankings. Not because they weren’t viable, or underpower or anything like that, but because they were irrelevant.

You need a better argument than pick-rates to justify any tweaks to heroes being rarely used. The ability or inability to ignore barriers isn’t a strong enough argument.

This is a bad argument. The damage and slow effect of the Sentries is irrelevant and can be changed as needed to suit the number of Sentries deployed. Which is exactly what they did they changed them. They Sentries of today do more damage than the Sentries at launch, individually. While the combined power of all the Sentries, up until recently, did the same damage they always had (today, they do less than at launch - another point against the idea of powercreep in terms of damage).

A better argument would be, because Symmetra has fewer Sentries at her disposal, she can’t cover as much space as she used to. Moreover, the wider distrubution net also meant that it would take longer to destroy them, thus they could inflict (albeit less) damage over a greater period of time. Or inflict it’s stacking slow effect on a greater number of targets (though this is specious reasoning, due to the fragility of sentries).

Pretty much already exists in the game.

Fair enough, but you’re really underestimating how good Zarya is at protecting herself and her teammates. She has a TTK similar to Reinhardt, if not slightly higher.

Best not to. All the barriers in the game - save Brigitte’s - can be shared amongst the team and they all benefit from it. While Tanks can benefit more from barriers than other heroes, the absence of a barrier is where mitigation comes into play (otherwise it’s just straight negation with one exception in Brigitte), and that’s basically where you’ll want to start evaluating effective health. Sigma, for example, has an incredible amount of barrier health, but not so much HP relative to Orisa, D.va, Reinhardt or Winston. Winston tends to be the best example, he has more effective health than Sigma, and only a slightly smaller barrier (relative to health) than Sigma. Why? Because Sigma also has ways of increasing his health pool through Kinectic Grasp, and it’s versatility in eating projectile ultimates and regular fire makes it ideal for negating damage, and giving him a greater health boost. Thus, Sigma technically has more effective health than Winston or Reinhardt, and sits on D.va’s level in terms of effective HP.

14

Map dependent situation.
just for exmaple what can you do at nepal sanctum?
besides even if reaper can avoid Pharah it doesn’t mean he can really do anything to her… his range is super close and unless you play pharah in a very small map like in eichenwald last point you cant really do anything to pharah.
So far the only time i saw Pharah dying to reaper is when pharah’s not carfull and she’s out of fuel near the enemies.
at sky Pharah becomes almost an impossible target to hit as Reaper and the fact you even focus her already means she won since you get no value for a long time.
even if you do suceed to get close somehow what stops her from using her concussive mine?
If you have any video or a more detailed explanation i’d like to see but so far I really cant see Reaper really doing anything to Pharah…

Even if Reaper can escape Pharah it’s like a cat-mouse situation.
sure the cat doesnt have a 100% chance to catch the mouse but the fact is the cat might catch the mouse or it wount, but the mouse will never catch the cat…
hard countering is all about getting rid of the enemy value.
even if reaper escape- the fact that he has to use his cooldowns to escape from her and cant do anything in return makes her a hard counter.

You say it like Bastion just lets himself get killed.
if both heroes fight turret Bastion will 99% will win.
he’s not effected by any of his combos and he can just melt doomfist within seconds.
hard countering is not press a button and then the enemy is dead at the same second no matter where when or how.
soft coutering-higher chances to win the enemy
hard counter-removing the enemy’s value entierly.
If doomfist cant do anything to you what value the hero has?
and even if you don’t agree with my deffnision- we talked about hard counters in the game because a situation of the same definition.
We talked about emp having no direct counter, but the facts are some heroes do have hard counters in the game.
sure I don’t think a perfect counter is a good idea but hard countering makes sense especially for heroes like Doomfist that have high reward but with the prize of high risk…

What barriers? we talked about a hero counter, if you add to the situation different utilities your not talking about the 2 heroes anymore.
Zarya may not be a perfect example because of her secondary attack i just i didnt want to reaper concepts but against Brigitte for example even if you can theoreticly reach her with your whip until you’re close and until your using it and the cool down especially when concidering your big hit box. you’re most probably dead.
Sure that excample may not be a good as the 2 before since you can still hide and seek with Brig but overall widow has much more chances to win and especially in the middle of a team fight Widow chances of killing Brigitte are enormous…

If we ignore symm ultimate because picking any of the shield baster just of her ult is useless, especially condiering they cant really do much against it… I know Bastion can destroy it but it takes almost the amount of the ult in order to beat it so I don’t know why even trying…
i can see only getting maximum of 2,500 hp of shields, where you’ve got extra 600hp for barrier?
take in mind i’m talking only on shields since if a character has more hp it’s just extra hp, there’s a huge different between bonus health for yourself to a wall that protects your team while also letting them keeping on shooting…

Anywats doesnt matter- the problem with both heroes (junkrat and bastion) is that they both have huge hit box, meaning they should be protected all time in order to bring any value.
Both rein’s shield and Sigma’s shield can be broken from distance if pressure is up for long enough, doesnt matter how much damage you do as long that you keep on shooting.
And then you’re left with orisa’s shield being the most optimal shield for both. it never drops and is on cool down. not only that but you also get value from your pick of orisa while sigma and rein dont really do much when their shield is up.
Bastion was never concidered as a good character after the nerfs but at least orisa and sigma buffed him a bit, if you nerf the characters that buffed bastion you nerf bastion as well.
besides less hp shield=less use for bastion. even if it’s not as bad or as good it’s still a situation where the use of bastion is less effective even if by a bit.
same for junkrat which also benefits the same way as bastion.

Pick rate is problematic only on high ranks where only the meta matters. but in plat and below players pick whatever they feel like will be good and the fact is Bastion still has horrible pick rate there.
even when comparing him to the other dps.

Why not? Each hero has a goal and reason to be picked.
Bastion is a hit scan+tank killer.
as a hit scan he does his job well but on shield destroying if you make the job less important you by that Nerf the hero itself.
I’m not saying that’s bastion’s only problem but it helps to his condition.

Not true because there are couple of factors when you look at turrets effectiveness
damage,speed and amount.
I never said launch Symmetra because the fact she was a support back then and because of that less speed and less damage so the amount was less effective back then.
but if you look at pure effect of number- more turrets more seprate things to hit.
if you play Junkrat for example and need to hit each turret seperatly it will take you much more time to destroy all 6 turrets and will take a big amount of your ammo.
but if you look on the opposite situation for example Winston. it will take much less time and ammo destroying 3 turrets with slightly less hp and damage.
Each hero will experience the amount of turrets differently and claiming 3 or 6 doesn’t matter is just ignoring each hero kit entierly…

Possible option. but I wanted to talk more on the specific of countering some of the heroes. less of the general effect. not saying it’s wrong but it just doesn’t fit the goal…

Against the orbs maybe… although im not a big fan of deflect and matrix since the orb is hard to catch with deflect in most of the times and it also connects a bit, not a huge problem but can have the impact it needs sometimes.
Against ult what do you suggest?
she moves faster, and in the backline and her ult can go through every abillity in the game except for Mei’s wall…
so in support you’ve got healing I guess?
on dps you’ve got the wall.
what solution tanks have to block it?
I would expect stun to be the case with hook and rock but she moves way faster and her range let her stay behind protected…

Totally agree, in terms of damage she’s amazing.
Wish they will buff her tanky side in term of protection, the damage is nice but the tanks category is all about protection and space making… if I wanted more damage I could have picked a 3rd dps (in open queue) but I really think tanks should be made first as protectors and space makers and only then as a damage source- some combine space making with damage ofcourse but didnt see any protection by dmg so far…

I agree but that’s why I think shields are so problematic…
shields not only cover the whole team but also has much more hp than any protection way.
looking at time based shields is kind of problematic considering their “hp” changes depends on the amount of damage they absorbed but in average
the hp of all tanks split is:

Reinhardt:2100
Sigma:1700+time based shield
Orisa:1650 (450 hp+2 shields if shield deployed before enemies arived)
Hammond:1300
Winston:1200
Roadhog:Between 900 to 1200 deppends on damage blocked. average of ~1050
Zarya:800
D.va:750+time based shield

Just for comparison if we look at Rein vs Zarya, Rein’s total protection hp is much higher than Zarya’s. 2100 vs 800.
even if Zarya regen some health using her shields the maximum amount is 2100vs1200. almsot 2X times of protection.
I don’t expect the numbers to be equal considering zarya blocks all effects and shield only beams and projectiles but concidering that shields have no cooldown vs bubble with long cooldown and use of 2 seconds and the fact shields protect all the team while bubble is big so it will usually catch all damage but doesnt protect the team as a whole…
And that part is without talking about the effectiveness of armor…
And while im not saying Zarya is bad im comparing once against potential and other protections.
The bubble is an amazing concept and because of that it’s used a lot, it blocks a lot of things shields cant and zarya’s damage is really good but it’s potential is not as high as shields are…