When you look as a greater picture we’ll see 28 heroes and only a few of them interacting. When we ask for nerfs to a hero instead of asking for the balance of the game we’ll wait months for something good to happen. A nerf or buff to a single hero in particular creates a snowball effect. Junkrat, albeit forgotten, paved the way to some meta heroes in particular.
DOOMFIST
I remember a time earlier this year when I would feel so impotent when there was a red Pharah or Junkrat as an enemy while I was training as Doomfist. I felt there was nothing I could do and I was forced to switch after dying 2 to 3 times in a row. Doomfist can’t sting like a bee, because he won’t float like a butterfly due the splash damage of nades covering large areas although damaging no one in particular. Even his newest shield buff wouldn’t save him. Torb’s turret acts similar at the goal of denying him free space so give more time before demanding nerfs to one-punch black man.
BRIGUITE
Brig would never be brave to go W+LMB into a team with Junkrt spamming. No she wouldn’t. No, no. Just picture it: Her tiny 500hp going forward into a group with 120 nade flying down at her under the bridge of Dorado that explode on contact with nice splash damage…rapidly shattering her barrier and hitting her backs and sides.
Even if something survived Junkrat still has two mines to blast her away from life and with no barrier she’s just food because she’s a melee hero: a food to Junkrat. Also her healing is useless against area damage and direct 120dmg nades and mines.
TANKS
You are complaining about GOATS and tanks? I know a guy who alone can disrupt and make the enemy think twice about pressing W even being backed up by that much healing. This guy has got both splash damage to peel and high direct damage to finish off red players and help teammates. He is also pretty nice vs Winston as well as keeping the upcoming Hog careful about approaching.
OVERALL
All that while being countered by a lot of heroes.
This is Junkrat for you: an important area denial hero that was denied after having his spotlight. The grenade radius nerf (-33% size which meant almost -50% size in volume and over 40% in contact area) was one of the worst balances I’ve seen and there’s little to talk back about it. It virtually cut his hits by half. He became very unreliable vs squishes (sometimes even vs tanks at medium range) and his effective usefulness went down as well.
If Blizzard wants to balance him, then reverting back the"radius nerf" to somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3. He is not suppose to shoot as fast as Pharah nor have the same blast radius as “DVa bomb”, but the nade is as random as a Moira orb (actually no: the orb will actually hit people) and throwing a mine is a lucky draw.
The game is equally horrible when Junkrat is too strong.
Nerf both. Or just remove them, both are horrible to balance properly and might’ve looked nice on paper but were conceived by devs who didn’t really think things through.
If he was too strong , one should balance and not nerf him to the ground.
A game is good when the heroes are BALANCED and not “too strong”, “too weak” or “removed”.
The radius nerf was horrible, therefore the the next step is buff him into a way of being fair and not too strong or too weak.
I dunno. I wouldn’t mind a revert too much, so long as we don’t overtune Junkrat and make him top of the meta again. However, we could take care Doom and Brig separately, though. Imo, nerfing Doomfist’s overhealing passive back to 30 overheal points per ability landed/people hit would be a good start. I don’t believe Doom needs the amount of shields he has right now to be useful ; since a great chunk of his bugs are outta the way, he’s now a way more reliable hero.
As for Brig… I got no idea. I wanted to nerf her burst healing ability, by making it so that the target receives 50 hp instantly, and then 100 hp over the course of 3 seconds, but that thing is all Brig she has to even reliably heal a team. I wanted to nerf the stun duration to 0.7 second from 1 second, but I’m not sure if it’s enough or if it’s too much. Brig is pretty hard to balance.
Add more counters to brig and doomfist sure… but PLEASE don’t make junkrat meta again. Season 8 had to be the most painful meta of all time, even worse than season 10. Because you literally heard fire in the hole every 30 seconds to come wipe out your supports -.-
Not to mention the tons of spam.
I honestly prefer df and brig over junkrat.
Literally this explains junkrat meta:
People complain about playing tanks now, but junkrat meta was absolutely worst for tanks. There’s nothing that drove me quite as crazy as those concussion mines tossing me around.
Doomfist is fine and in a great spot balance wise right now. Brigitte actually needs a buff, her last shield health nerf was just so necessary and way too impactful. Revert that nerf and she’s in a great spot too.
Balancing other heroes instead of nerfing 1 a single one to the ground is better for the state of the game. I’ve seen so many biased and stubborn opinions here… people saying “hero A is bad so he needs to keep being weak and useless because he had his popularity period”. Wow.
People actually prefer selected characters to be F to A+ tier instead of cheering for all them to be B+ to A+ tier. Just wow…
No wonder most serious players won’t bring discussions here.